---
title: '12 Brisket Mistakes Everyone Should Avoid'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=M5FyLL4O0dE'
video_id: 'M5FyLL4O0dE'
date: 2026-06-28
duration_sec: 1144
---

# 12 Brisket Mistakes Everyone Should Avoid

> Source: [12 Brisket Mistakes Everyone Should Avoid](https://youtube.com/watch?v=M5FyLL4O0dE)

## Summary

Jeremy Yoder from Mad Scientist BBQ lists and explains 12 common mistakes people make when smoking brisket. The advice covers temperature control, rub selection, timing, resting, and trimming, with specific recommendations for different types of smokers.

### Key Points

- **Cooking at the Wrong Temperature** [00:09] — Different smokers require different temperatures. Small offsets: 250F, big offsets: 275F, ceramic cookers and pellet grills: 225F, Weber Smoky Mountain/Kettle: 225-250F (up to 275F if rushing).
- **Using the Wrong Rub** [01:47] — For high-smoke offsets, simple salt and pepper is best. For pellet grills, a more complex rub can supplement flavor, but avoid over-covering the surface to allow smoke penetration.
- **Not Allowing Enough Time** [03:15] — Always add 2.5 extra hours to your estimated cook time. Brisket can stall or finish early; resting longer is better than serving undercooked meat.
- **Not Resting Long Enough** [04:24] — Rest allows rendered fat to distribute. For cooks under 8 hours, rest in cooler immediately. For 8-12 hours, cool to 180F then rest. For 12+ hours, cool to 165-170F then rest. Minimum rest 1 hour, aim for 2+. Serve at ~145F.
- **Making Changes That Are Too Big** [06:39] — Change only one variable at a time to understand its effect. Since outdoor cooking has many uncontrolled factors (humidity, wood moisture), controlling changes helps consistency.
- **Looking for the Wrong Signs Before Wrapping** [08:14] — Five signs before wrapping: 1) Color (dark = good smoke), 2) Bark formation, 3) Sweat (brisket shrinks ~40%), 4) Fat render (yellow and soft), 5) Temperature (usually 175-185F). Use temperature as a fail-safe.
- **Spraying the Fat Instead of the Meat** [12:45] — Spray only the meat to protect it; the fat needs to get hot to render. Spraying fat is counterproductive.
- **Over-Smoking or Under-Smoking** [13:08] — Know your cooker. Offsets rarely over-smoke; smokers with smoldering wood chunks can. Use color and bark as clues to adjust smoke amount.
- **Wild Temperature Swings** [13:55] — Keep temperature consistent (within 20F for most smokers, 10F for offsets, 5F for large pits). Drops cause brisket to cool and lose cooking time; spikes cause burning.
- **Getting Low-Quality Meat** [14:57] — Buy the best brisket you can afford – at least Choice grade, Prime from Costco is affordable. Wagyu is optional but not necessary for great results.
- **Wrapping Improperly** [16:30] — Wrap tightly – foil should trap steam, paper should be snug. Loose wrapping allows steam to escape and defeats the purpose.
- **Improperly Trimming Your Brisket** [17:14] — Do not remove all fat (brisket will dry out) but be merciless on thin parts of the flat. Trim off pieces that could burn and use them for burgers or sausages.

## Transcript

hey guys welcome to mad scientist
barbecue i'm jeremy oder and today i'm
going to tell you about the 12 most
common brisket cooking mistakes
brisket mistake number one cooking at
the wrong temperature
now this happens all the time because
usually people aren't cooking on the
same type of smoker
as they might see somebody else cooking
on in a video for instance
there are probably very few people out
there who cook on a thousand gallon pit
like aaron franklin does
he's going to cook at 275 285 and he's
going to get very different results than
if you try to cook at those temperatures
on your weber kettle so the point is
this
figure out the right temperature for
your smoker and you're going to have
much better results now
franklin can cook a lot hotter on his
pit because he has so much convection
moving through there that it's
constantly cooling the brisket and as a
matter of fact if you tried to cook a
brisket at 225 it would take him
27 28 hours so this one isn't quite as
extreme
but it's pretty close so for me i gotta
cook it 275 or else my brisket's going
to take forever to get done
now if you have say a pellet grill if
you cook at 275 you're probably going to
burn your brisket
so it's usually smarter on a pellet
grill to cook at 225
or if you have a green egg i would
suggest something like 225 because
there's not tons of air rushing past
that brisket to cool it down all the
time so
basic guideline okay a small offset 250
is good
a big offset 275 is good ceramic
cooker like a kamado joe or big green
egg i'd recommend 225
i'd also recommend 225 for pellet grills
and then on a weber smoky mountain or a
weber kettle i would say
225 up to 250 if you're really trying to
rush it you can go hotter up to 275
and you probably won't burn anything but
the best temperature for flavor and
results would be
the 225 to 250. mistake number two
using the wrong rub when people cook
barbecue
they either tend to go in two directions
there are two extremes
one is they want to use a rub that has
tons of flavors in it and they may even
combine two or three different rubs just
to try to pack as much flavor on the
exterior surface
of the brisket as possible and then
other people will go to
ultimate simplicity just salt and pepper
now
the correct answer depends on the kind
of cooker you're using again
so if you're using a big offset salt and
pepper you're going to be totally fine
there's going to be so much flavor that
accumulates on the exterior surface of
that brisket that you're not going to be
wanting for anything else
now if you're using something that
doesn't produce a ton of smoke flavor
don't hate me pellet grill users but
pellet grills just don't produce as much
flavor as a big offset
it can still produce great flavor and it
can still produce a good amount of that
flavor
but you may want to supplement with more
things more spices
in that rub but i would caution you
against using
too much and covering the whole surface
so that smoke flavor doesn't really
penetrate
so i would say find a happy medium so
if you're using a big offset then you
add salt and pepper all the way to go or
even a small offset salt and pepper
you're going to be totally fine but if
you're cooking on another kind of smoker
i would say keep the rub simple so you
can add more things like
onion and garlic maybe dry mustard
powder things that you like
or some chilies but don't go so heavy
with the rub especially with the fine
particles
that it covers up the surface and you
don't get the smoke flavor that's the
whole reason
you're barbecuing in the first place all
right mistake number three and this
is a big one and it's true no matter
what kind of smoker you're using
okay it is not allowing yourself enough
time before you have to serve the food
this has inevitably gotten everybody who
barbecues well i would presume
almost everybody who barbecues if not
everyone because a lot of times you'll
say
you know what i think it's going to take
about you know 10 hours to do this cook
and then i'll let it rest for an hour
and then the guests will be there about
30 minutes after that it's all going to
be fine
but the problem with doing outdoor
cooking is that you can never
really predict exactly how the cook is
going to go sometimes you'll have a
brisket that stalls out forever and
doesn't want to finish sometimes you
have a brisket that gets done two hours
early
so what i would say is if you're trying
to feed guests make sure you give
yourself
more than enough time so you could
calculate exactly how long you think
it's going to take
i would say add an extra two and a half
hours to that
and then you're safe because you can
always let the brisket rest for a little
longer
but if you don't give it time to finish
then you're going to have hungry guests
and you're either going to make them
wait too long
or you're going to serve something
that's not quite done both circumstances
provide
less than ideal results mistake number
four not allowing your brisket to rest
long enough now this is something that
gets overlooked a ton
in backyard cooks but it's something
that's very important to the
og pit masters if you go to places like
memphis or
the central texas region as a matter of
fact when i went to austin the last time
when i was hanging out with the guys who
were running pits
most of the time they didn't give a crap
what what i was using they didn't care
about the rub i was using you know what
they talked to me about they talked to
me about
rest times and how i rest my brisket and
a lot of those guys are resting for six
eight 10 even 12 hours before they serve
the meat
and there's good reason for it because
resting it allows
the rendered fat inside the meat to
distribute really well you're going to
have
brisket that's more moist and it's going
to be the right level of tenderness if
you rest it properly like that so what i
would suggest for most backyard smokers
is this if you cook is eight hours or
less
say you have a small cooker and it just
cooks quickly and you
finish up in eight hours what i would do
is upon removing that brisket
i would take it put it in a cooler and
allow it to stay hot in there and slowly
come down in temperature
if your cook takes between 8 to 12 hours
what i would suggest
is you pull the brisket you let it come
down to about 180 degrees then
allow it to rest in a cooler if your
cook takes 12 hours plus
i would suggest pulling the brisket
allowing it to cool to
165 170 and then place it in the cooler
to slowly come down to a serving
temperature of about 145 degrees or so
and the reason that i give different
rest protocols for different times of
cooking is because
the longer the cook takes the more time
that brisket is spent at a high
temperature
which is kind of the reverse of resting
for a long time afterward
so if you have a long cook time you
already have some rest period built in
but you want to make sure that you have
ample time for everything to distribute
and everything to kind of equalize in
that brisket before you actually slice
it
you don't want to cut into the brisket
too hot and you don't want to let it
cool too much
but if you serve it at about 145 degrees
with a nice long rest
minimum of one hour you should really
strive for at least two hours of rest
then you're going to be pleasantly
surprised with how much better the
product is
than when you just pull it out let it
cool down quickly and slice into it
big mistake number five is making
changes that are too big
what i mean by that is this when you're
doing a brisket
right unless the last time you did it
was a complete horror show and
everything was a complete disaster
don't change everything so i know some
people will do a brisket one way and
then they'll change
everything about how they did it so
they'll change the temperature that they
were cooking at
they're gonna change the rub they're
going to change the injection or they're
going to
not inject when they did the time before
and they're going to do different wood
everything is different they're going to
go with a water pan when they didn't
have one last time
so essentially what you're going to find
out is if you make those big changes
you're not really going to know how to
deal with all those changes at the same
time
and then also if it turns out that you
do one and it's good or it's bad
you're not going to know what thing
affected that cook
so if you make small changes and you
kind of have a slow progression toward
the exact kind of brisket you want to
make you're going to be much more
successful
than doing wild and crazy things each
time because you're not going to have
the consistency or the experience with
all those different changes to make sure
that you produce the best brisket
possible
now from a science perspective we want
to control as many things as possible
because when you're doing outdoor
cooking there are a lot of things that
you don't have control over
you don't have control over the
temperature outside you don't have
control over the humidity outside
you don't have control over every aspect
of what's in each piece of wood
because they're all a little bit
different the moisture content might
vary from one piece to the next
so in order to have as much control over
your final outcome
as possible only change one tiny thing
at a time
so that way you don't have wild swings
in the quality of what you make
brisket mistake number six looking for
the wrong
signs in your brisket what i mean by
that is people are going to look for
usually one of two things before they
wrap and they usually
look at the temperature and for most
people that's the only thing that
they're really checking
and the second thing that they'll look
for is time so a new brisket smoker
might think
oh i should leave it on the smoker for
four hours before i wrap it or
whatever they have been told it's not
about time
and then it's also not ultimately about
temperature even though that's a part of
it
what i would suggest is there are five
things to look for
before you wrap your brisket and i'm
gonna break them down pretty simply as
simply as i can
for you right now number one color
this is going to be your proxy for how
much smoke flavor
you put on the brisket so the darker the
brisket generally speaking
the more smoke flavor you have on it so
you want to make sure you have a good
amount of smoke flavor because that's
the whole reason you put it in a cooker
and not in an oven anyway
number two we'll look at the bark itself
so if you have a build up
of stuff on the exterior surface where
you have a combination of the rub that
you use
the fat render and the meat itself
kind of all turned into this delicious
covering on your brisket
when you have a good bark on the
exterior and once you've had good bark
you'll know exactly what i'm talking
about
once you have that on the outside that's
one of the necessary conditions before
you wrap
number three is going to be this despite
what you may believe
you actually want your brisket to sweat
out a bunch of water in the cooking
process
so you lose a bunch of the water and the
brisket shrinks down in size
so for me when i see that the brisket
has shrunk about 40
that's the sign for me telling me it's
time to wrap now what can happen is
if you don't allow it to sweat out
enough water before wrapping
it will fill the wrap itself with lots
of moisture and you get the soupy stuff
that washes off all the bark that you
worked so hard to create
you don't want that make sure that your
brisket loses enough water
and as a consequence concentrates that
flavor
and then you're going to have a better
bark and a better brisket in the end
number four fat render this is something
i get asked about all the time
what i talk about when i say rendered
fat is when the fat on top of the
brisket turns yellow and when you poke
it
there's not resistance it doesn't bounce
back like rubber
it goes and your finger just pokes in it
you look at it it's yellow it's soft
that is rendered fat when the fat has
rendered that's another key
you have to look for before wrapping
your brisket and then finally number
five
is temperature now temperature isn't the
be-all end-all
of when it's time to wrap but it's one
component that i look for
and it's usually the one that i look for
last so basically i'll check those other
four things
and when they're all the way i want them
then i'll check the temperature
and it just tells me that i'm not crazy
you know it's just a kind of a fail-safe
for me to make sure that
i'm not just way off base with where i
think this brisket is in its cooking
process
so i will tempt the point and i'll tempt
the flat and usually the temperature
that comes up
is anywhere between 175 to 185
that's when i usually end up wrapping
briskets i've wrapped them as low as
161.
i've wrapped them as high as 195 but
usually
the way it works out when i've got to
cook everything's going right it's
between 175 and 185
that all those four other things show up
and so if you're not
super confident about identifying those
other four characteristics
you can use temperature as a best guess
to figure out when it's time to wrap
bonus tip if you don't have a digital
instant read thermometer
get one it will save you money in meat
that you don't ruin
so a lot of people like to use leave-in
probes when i'm cooking say 20 briskets
on here
i'm not going to stick in 20 probes but
what you get with a digital instant read
thermometer that you just poke in
is two things number one is you don't
have to deal with a bunch of wires and a
bunch of
hassle to use it it's very simple it's
very compact
number two is when you actually poke in
the probe
you can get a feel for the texture of
the meat so there are going to be times
when you poke a brisket you're like oh
that feels great it's like
softened butter this guy is done then
other times you try to poke it in you're
like oh this is still really tough this
is going to need more time
i don't even care what the thermometer
says i know by virtue of the feel of
this brisket
that it's not ready yet and by the way
my favorite digital instrument
thermometer is the thermapen
i've had a bunch of them in the past and
i've spent more money
on those other cheap ones because they
break or they rust
or they get wet then i spent on one
thermal pen that has lasted me
without any problems at all so if you're
interested in one of those i'll put a
link in the description down below
brisket mistake number seven this is a
quick one when you're spraying your
brisket
don't spray the fat because you want the
fat to get hot you want it to render
you spray the meat to protect it the fat
doesn't need any protecting so spray the
meat if you get some of the spray on the
fat it's not the end of the world
it's just counterproductive to the
ultimate ends of rendered fat and moist
brisket
without burning any of the meat so spray
the meat not the fat
brisket mistake number eight over
smoking or under smoking
the meat now this comes down to knowing
your cooker and how much wood you can
use
before you get too much smoke flavor and
it starts to taste
bitter and not enjoyable so on something
like an offset like this
there's no amount of smoke flavor that
i've ever had come off of this thing
that i would say is too much or
anything other than oh that tastes
really good i want more of it
there are other smokers so if you're
using something that kind of smolders
wood chunks you can
definitely oversmoke the meat i know
when i first started barbecuing i did
that because i thought if smoke is good
more smoke is better
but that's not always the case so use
those other clues
like the color of the brisket and the
kind of bark you're forming to figure
out how much smoke you're actually
putting on the meat and don't over smoke
it
mistake number nine wild temperature
swings now they're going to be some
cookers where this isn't a problem if
you've got a pellet smoker
you're not going to be having huge
temperature swings you're good you can
skip this one move on to the next tip
but if you have an offset smoker it's so
so important that you
keep the temperature consistent because
if you let your fire die down
not only are you not cooking during that
time the brisket is cooling off
so say you fall asleep for an hour not
only were you not cooking that brisket
for that hour
for an hour the brisket was going down
in temperature so you've lost more than
just the hour you fell asleep
so keep the temperature consistent for
that reason number two
is if you have wild temperature swings
way up and way down
you're going to end up burning parts of
the brisket and you're not going to get
the consistent level of doneness from
one side to the other
that you want so if you can stay you
know plus or minus probably
20 degrees you'll be good right on uh
500 like this you can stay
plus or minus 10. uh on a thousand
gallon you could probably stay plus or
minus five
but the smaller the smoker the harder
that battle is but the more you work at
it the better your results are going to
be
brisket mistake number 10 getting low
quality meat now
as in many things in life you get what
you pay for
when you buy meat so get the best
brisket you can afford now if you can
afford
you know wagyu beef then by all means
get wag view beef
but that's really expensive you don't
have to get wagyu beef to make great
brisket
so i would say get at least choice
because otherwise you're setting
yourself up for failure if you get
select brisket it's going to be really
really really tough to make great
brisket you have to really know what
you're doing
and so these are common mistakes to
avoid so i'm guessing that the people
who are watching this
don't have tons and tons and tons of
experience cooking brisket so i'd say
get at least choice if you can get prime
get prime
so most people have access to a costco
where they live and at costco you can
get prime briskets for
not too much money so you can probably
spend about 60 bucks and get a prime
brisket now with that you can actually
make tremendously good barbecue
and you don't have to feel like you're
sacrificing or compromising on meat
quality
and you give yourself the best chance to
make a good brisket in the end by
starting off
with the best meat from the beginning
now that rule for meat quality
generally holds true for all kinds of
meat no matter what it is
but sometimes there are exceptions for
instance the best beef rib that i've
ever made and my wife's favorite that
i've ever made
was a choice beef rib but we had the
benefit there of it being a beef short
rib that's already packed with fat and
it just happened to be
the stars aligned to make that a perfect
beef rib so
you don't have to give up on making
great brisket if you can't find prime
but prime is going to give you the best
chance of making good stuff in the end
mistake number 11 is wrapping improperly
and what i mean by that is
pretty simple when you wrap the brisket
whatever you're using to wrap
do it well so if you're using foil make
it nice and tight you don't want a bunch
of steam escaping
because if you're using foil you're
doing it specifically to trap all that
steam in there
don't let it escape or else the wrapping
isn't going to do exactly what you want
it to do
with paper a lot of times people will
wrap it loosely the first time i tried
to wrap it in paper i just wrapped it
loosely and
it was leaking everywhere and it didn't
really work
it kind of protected the meat a little
bit but it was awful i would not
recommend it so i'd say
wrap it tightly and wrap it well because
that way you're going to achieve exactly
what the purpose of the wrap
is in the end last but not least
mistake number 12 improperly trimming
your brisket now there are two extremes
with this one as well
some people try to trim off every bit of
fat on the whole brisket
and then they put it in the smoker and
it comes out dry and they can't figure
it out
they're like what is wrong because maybe
they saw somebody else do it don't
do that if you're trying to smoke your
brisket that's a bad idea also some
people
are very very reluctant to trim off
parts of the brisket
because you spent good money on this
thing you don't want to waste any of it
but what i would say is this
you're going to be better off trimming
pieces off and then using it for burgers
or sausages
or some purpose where it's really going
to shine instead of leaving it on the
brisket
where it could burn or dry out in the
end you don't want to have any part of
that brisket
be something that's dried or crusty or
burnt what you want is delicious
succulent brisket in the end and one
more thing i want to say about people
who are too reluctant to trim
my advice to you is be merciless when
you're trimming the flat
so if you see a big chunk of meat that
juts out from the flat and you think i
can probably survive i would say be
merciless take it off
and you're probably going to have a
better result in the end i hope these
tips helped you guys out
and good luck if you're smoking a
brisket for labor day i'm going to be
doing it too
and maybe i'll post some pictures on
instagram also you can follow me on
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i'll see you guys next time hey reggie
the 12 most common brisket mistakes
now i'm trying again the thing in the
way
there are lots of things that are
changing the him okay
ready this is number six okay
okay okay okay but prime is gonna get
okay last but not the knees try again
ready