Third brisket out of the bath and the inside gets better every time, but the outside is letting the whole thing down. It comes out of the bag looking boiled, which I expected, and then whatever I do afterwards gives me colour without any actual bark. Last one I gave 25 minutes in the oven at 200°C hoping to build a crust and all I did was warm the outer half inch past where I wanted it.
Two camps on the other forums I read. Camp one smokes the brisket for a few hours first, then bags it and cooks it. Camp two cooks it first and does everything at the end. I have a small offset smoker sitting in the garage judging me, so I would like camp one to be correct, but I am open to being told otherwise.
I've done both more times than I can count and I've ended up in camp one, with a caveat.
Smoke first, two to three hours, cold-ish smoke to start, then bag it and into the bath. The smoke flavour gets right into the meat and stays there instead of sitting on the surface. Then at the end you only need eight to ten minutes of very high heat to firm the surface up, not the 25 minutes you're doing, and that's why yours is going grey underneath. Your bark problem isn't a bark problem, it's a "you're trying to build flavour at the finish that should already be in there" problem.
Caveat: those hours in the smoker are hours the meat isn't at a controlled temperature, and if you're smoking a big cold brisket slowly in warm weather that's worth thinking about rather than ignoring.
No smoker here so I'm firmly camp two by default, and honestly the rub does a lot of the work. Heavy pepper and salt crust, blast it, and it gets close enough that nobody at my table has ever asked. Not claiming it's the same. Claiming it's 80% of it for none of the equipment.
#4July 30, 2026, 10:25 am Your 25 minutes is the actual culprit here and it's the same mistake people make with steak, just stretched out. The bath cooks the meat to exactly where you set it, and every minute of finishing heat after that only travels inwards. A quarter of an hour of oven time is plenty to overcook half an inch of a brisket you spent two days protecting.
What changed things for me, in order. Dry the surface properly, and I mean properly, an hour uncovered on a rack in the fridge if you have the time, because a wet surface spends the first several minutes of your finish just steaming. Then go much hotter and much shorter than feels right: as hot as your oven or grill goes, eight to twelve minutes, watching it rather than timing it. And accept that a water bath finish will never give you the thick barbecue bark that comes from ten hours in a smoker, because that bark is built over the whole cook and no ten minute finish reproduces it. What you can get is a genuinely good crust on genuinely better meat, which is a fair trade.
On the camp question I'm no help, I've done both and I like both. The brisket guide sets out the trade-off, and the general rule for every finish on this site is in how to sear after sous vide: dry surface, high heat, short.
Interested in Mike's caveat because nobody ever mentions it. Is there a rough limit on how long a big cold piece of meat can sit in a warm smoker before the bag, or is it a "depends on your smoker and your weather" answer? Genuinely asking, not point scoring.
Ran it again. Smoked three hours, bagged, 30 hours at 155°F (68°C), then dried on a rack for 40 minutes and nine minutes under the grill at full blast instead of a quarter of an hour in the oven.
Better crust from less time, which I still find annoying, and no grey band. Not smoker bark and I've made peace with that. Tessa's question is a good one and I don't have an answer either, mine gets bagged within about ten minutes of coming off the smoke and I've never let it sit around, mostly by accident.
