Brisket night and day, same cut, same smoker, 4 months apart

Picked up a whole packer from a local farm in Austin back in June and it came out like shoe leather, even after 14 hours. Then last week I grabbed another one from the same guy, same size, and it was borderline perfect, juicy, sliceable, the whole deal. The difference was I finally stopped trimming it like a ribeye and left a solid inch of fat cap on, plus I rested it in a cooler for 90 minutes instead of 20. Anyone else have a single habit change that flipped their results that hard, or was it just my rookie mistakes stacking up?

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king.derek17d ago

Went through something similar with pork shoulders back in 2021. Same butcher, same smoker, same 16 hour cook, and one came out dry as dust while the other one pulled apart like butter. Only thing I changed was wrapping it in butcher paper at the stall instead of foil. Took me three more shoulders to realize it wasn't the meat or the heat, it was that I kept opening the lid every hour to check it like a nervous parent. Swapped to a wireless probe and stopped looking at it until the alarm went off. Now it's boringly consistent. Your fat cap and rest thing makes sense though, I bet it was the rest that did most of the work.