To make it nice and juicy, you have to cook it for a while so the connective tissue breaks down – which can take anything from a few hours to as much as 12 or more, depending on the size of the brisket and your cooking method. Why does brisket take so long to cook?īrisket is a tough cut of beef that comes from the chest of the cow and has lots of gristly bits and collagen. Once the internal temperature reaches 195 to 205 ☏ at the thickest part of the brisket, it can be removed from the smoker to rest. The only way to determine how far along the smoking process is by using a meat thermometer to measure the internal temperature of the brisket.

However, the marbling of the entire cut is going to dictate a large part of the cooking experience and the moistness of the smoked beef brisket. The entire packer comprises two muscles, the brisket flat and the brisket point, the latter is the fattest, but you’ll have to remove excess fat. However, grill masters use the approximate time only as a guide when planning the process of smoking a whole-packer brisket, and even when smoking the flat or point only. If you have a regular 10–12-pound brisket, it is a large cut that will take roughly 10 to 15 hours to smoke at 250 ☏. Generally, smoking brisket at 250 degrees takes between 1 and 1.5 hours per pound of meat. It’s tough to say exactly how long it will take to smoke brisket at 250 degrees Fahrenheit – it depends on the size, how thick it is, how much fat it has, and the doneness you want to achieve.

Flat cap brisket