I wonder if they used the "Texas Crutch," i.e., wrapped the brisket in foil after ~4 hours.
The upshot of the Texas Crutch technique is: after about 2 hours on the smoke, the internal temperature of a brisket will plateau for 6-8 hours before climbing toward its final temperature. According to experiments by Greg Blonder[0], this stall is caused by evaporative cooling: once the internal temperature reaches a point where the energy lost to evaporation balances the energy gained from the (low---225-250 Fahrenheit is the "right" temperature for a brisket) ambient temperature, the internal temp of the meat will stay put until sufficient water has evaporated.
Some call this cheating, but in my experimentation the "crutch" produces significantly tastier results because of the difference in juiciness. As additional evidence here, I'll note that every BBQ place in Austin whose brisket is good to great---Franklin, La Barbecue, John Mueller Meat Co., and even Rudy's---wraps their briskets in foil. (Edited to add: I didn't mention Black's and Kreutz's because I'm not 100% sure that they do, but I vaguely recall that they do.)
One worry might be that the meat doesn't absorb as much smoke after the foil is applied, and this is indeed true. One can trade off additional time in the smoke for more evaporation. After about 4 hours, the meat isn't going to absorb much more flavor from the smoke, so that's a great time to wrap it.
In fact, at that point you may as well make your life easier by transferring the meat to an oven (ideally, a convection oven to avoid hot spots) and finishing it off. It may feel wrong, but in my experience the results are superb.
Franklin uses pink butcher paper, not foil. While the cook will be shortened with the crutch it is done at the expense of the bark. Crutching makes for a softer less "barky" bark. This is, supposdaly, one of the benefits to using butcher paper as it permits the meat to continue to breath and therefore has less of an impact on the bark formation.
"right temperature for a brisket" --> to clarify, you mean the "right temperature to smoke a brisket", not the right temperature for the meat.
Brisket (whole, untrimmed) takes about 1.5 hours per pound at a cooking temp of 225-250F. You really get the maximum smoke up through the range of 125 through 150 or so as the smoke ring forms...it's all related to collagen breaking down. Past that, the smoke isn't doing much except producing a good bark.
Here are my tips if you're doing this:
* Use untrimmed whole brisket. Fat matters.
* Get a Weber bullet and learn to use it. Rock solid in terms of maintaining temperature once you learn it.
* Leave the brisket on until you get into the 185-195F range. This might take 1 to 1.5 hours per pound. I've taken 18 hours for a 12 pound brisket.
* Depending on the time you want to serve it, here's where you have to adapt to meet your crowd's needs. If you're ahead of schedule, let it slowly rise on the smoker to the 195-205 range. If you're still early, wrap in foil and pack in a cooler, hich can help you hold temp for a few hours. If you're behind then you'll want to foil wrap, oven finish (or just foil wrap and ramp up to 275 on the heat), but allow enough time for it to rest.
The briskets I've screwed up were pulled off too soon (internal temp in the 185 range). The better ones were the ones I let get up to 195-205 (usually oven finished because I went too slow) and rested before slicing.
The best part of a whole brisket is trimming off the point, cubing it up, foil-wrapping it with some sauce inside, putting it back on for burnt ends. It's often a pound or so of meat that makes for great sandwiches for a few days after on toasted Texas Toast.
There is nothing more delightful in the world than snarfing up the trimmings of a well-smoked brisket...
Nathan Myhrvold in Modernist Cusine writes about a similar technique. Sous vide first, followed by a brief time in the oven, and finished on a smoker. This seems to be the reverse of the crutch. (The oven is used to prime the meat for smoking and is apparently based on a German technique for making sausages.)
Of course if you cringe at wrapping your smoked food in foil you'll hate this way too. I'm also not sure if this is the technique he used to win his bbq medals, perhaps that's a secret.
Interesting. There seem to be conflicting opinions here. Referring again to Blonder[0], it seems that one can improve smoke absorption by mopping consistently. Personally, I'm usually pretty aggressive with the mopping, that is, every 45 minutes to 1 hour.
Lookin' ain't cookin' are the words I live by. (Brisket is very, very forgiving if you go low and slow and just focus on the internal meat temperature. Maintain 225-250F with the smoker, don't worry about short spikes, focus mostly on the target temperature.)
Turn once 50% into the cook (pounds * 1.5 hours), again at 75%. Spray apple juice.
I learned a ton from the Virtual Weber Bullet forums. From the perspective of food hacking, the HN crowd would really love it--lots of overlap with the approach, even a lot of good "hardware" mods.
I should be more careful in how I write comments. What I should have said was: a few Cooking Issues episodes ago, Dave Arnold talked to the head smoker guy at Underground Meats in Madison, who said something to the effect of: there's minimal penetration of smoke into meat after ~130f.
I was under the impression from his book and his videos[0] that Franklin's didn't use the crutch as "policy" unless it was necessary...but I've never been lucky enough to get down there to Austin yet so I can't say for sure.
The upshot of the Texas Crutch technique is: after about 2 hours on the smoke, the internal temperature of a brisket will plateau for 6-8 hours before climbing toward its final temperature. According to experiments by Greg Blonder[0], this stall is caused by evaporative cooling: once the internal temperature reaches a point where the energy lost to evaporation balances the energy gained from the (low---225-250 Fahrenheit is the "right" temperature for a brisket) ambient temperature, the internal temp of the meat will stay put until sufficient water has evaporated.
Some call this cheating, but in my experimentation the "crutch" produces significantly tastier results because of the difference in juiciness. As additional evidence here, I'll note that every BBQ place in Austin whose brisket is good to great---Franklin, La Barbecue, John Mueller Meat Co., and even Rudy's---wraps their briskets in foil. (Edited to add: I didn't mention Black's and Kreutz's because I'm not 100% sure that they do, but I vaguely recall that they do.)
One worry might be that the meat doesn't absorb as much smoke after the foil is applied, and this is indeed true. One can trade off additional time in the smoke for more evaporation. After about 4 hours, the meat isn't going to absorb much more flavor from the smoke, so that's a great time to wrap it.
In fact, at that point you may as well make your life easier by transferring the meat to an oven (ideally, a convection oven to avoid hot spots) and finishing it off. It may feel wrong, but in my experience the results are superb.
[0] http://www.genuineideas.com/ArticlesIndex/stallbbq.html