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Longest brisket stall
If you’re wondering what the longest brisket stall that you can have for your brisket is, then you have come to the right place.
For starters, briskets will stall generally speaking anywhere from about 150°F and 175°F. This is perhaps one of the most common phenomena that you will see with smoking any type of barbecue.
This period usually lasts for about 2 to 3 hours long, depending whether or not you wrap the brisket during that period or not.
Let’s take a quick look at the longest a brisket can possibly stall for.
What’s the longest a brisket can stall?
For the most part, briskets will usually stall between 150°F and 175°F for a period of about 2 to 3 hours. That is usually the longest a brisket will stall, considering that you are cooking them at consistent temperatures as well as possibly wrapping them.
Wrapping a brisket will have the effect of significantly decreasing the overall time that it takes to push past that temperature range. If you don’t wrap your brisket, then you can certainly expect the upper end of that three hour mark for the temperature to rise above 175°F.
Brisket Stall Time
As noted above, the longest a brisket will more than likely stall is up to about three hours, regardless of whether or not you wrap it.
Once you understand how you can start to manipulate the overall length of time it takes to cook certain briskets during certain portions of the cook, it makes the process of barbecuing a lot easier.
Ambient temperatures are basically just how hot and fast or low and slow you are happening to cook a brisket at. The hotter and temperatures you go, it significantly decreases the cook time you can expect.
Likewise, for lower temperature cooks, you can certainly expect longer cook times over all including during the stall portion of the cook.
With wrapping your brisket, you are basically producing an environment surrounding the entirety of your brisket that increases the overall temperature at which it is cooking.
It can be a great way to be very efficient with your time as well as with your fuel, since you don’t actually need to go back to your firebox and start adding logs of wood to increase the ambient temperature.
All you have to do is either grab a type of wrapping like aluminum foil or butcher paper and properly wrap your brisket once it reaches 150°F in internal temperature.
By modifying the ambient temperatures as well as perhaps wrapping your brisket, you can certainly save yourself a lot of time and decrease the overall length of time that the brisket will go through the stall portion of the cook.
Brisket stuck at 165
If it has been about an hour that the brisket has been hovering at around 165°F, you can safely assume that the brisket is in the stall portion of the cook. All you have to do is take a quick look at whether or not you are wrapping your brisket, as well as how hot and fast you are smoking it.
Make sure to pick either method that suits your needs. Either increase the ambient temperature substantially to push your brisket past the 165°F mark, or consider wrapping it for a substantial period of time until the internal temperature pushes past that point and you are comfortable removing the wrapping from the brisket.
Brisket stall at 200
Every so often, it seems that briskets will actually incur a second stall as you cook them. What I mean by that, is once you push past the 175° mark, which is the end of the stall portion of the cook, many seem to report back that their briskets are actually stalling once again right before it is supposed to temp out at about 200°F.
I’ve seen this happen quite a bit, and I think the effects can be exacerbated by the impatience of the pitmaster.
It’s basically the last few miles in terms of cooking your brisket, so it can be pretty easy to think that the time is taking a lot longer than usual.
But having said that, there are instances where I’ve seen a brisket stall at around that temperature.
To negate this, just try to not fiddle with the fire box or consider wrapping the brisket, since it is already so close to being done. You don’t want to increase the ambient temperature in the fire box only to have it soar past the done temperature and overcook your brisket.
Since you’re basically a handful degrees off from all the collagen completely rendering down, just have a little bit more patience and keep checking the temperature of the brisket every 30 minutes or so.
How long for brisket to go from 170 to 200
For the most part, brisket will only take about another couple of hours to go from 170° to 200°F in internal temperature. Most of the battle has already been fought at the point that your brisket has exited the stall at about 170°F.
All you have to do at that point is focus on creating enough smoke flavor for your brisket and seasoning to restore any lost bark accumulation.
Let’s now take a quick look now at when the brisket stall actually ends and how you can consider that going forward into your brisket cooking.
What temp does brisket stall end
For the most part, briskets will generally stall between 150°F and 175°F. That is really the most common temperature range at which the internal temperature seems to flatline for several hours.
If you’re interested in learning how to further fix a stall brisket, then keep reading.
How do you fix a stalled brisket?
When you have stalled brisket, all you really need to do is either wrap it or increase the ambient temperature that you are smoking it at. Those two things alone will certainly remediate a stalled brisket and will push the internal temperature way above 175°F in no time.
Otherwise, have a little bit more patience and then you can also get going as well.
Final Thoughts
Most briskets will stall anywhere from 150°F to 175°F for a period of 2 to 3 hours. That means that if you have a low ambient temperature and are not wrapping your brisket, then you will most likely be pushing your brisket to the 3 hour mark, or so, for the overall stall.
If you are cooking at hot temperatures and are wrapping, then consider the brisket to be done about an hour or so quicker than otherwise, at about 2 or so hours, approximately.
Robert is a certified Pitmaster, with over a decade of experience in smoking the best meats you’ll ever feast upon. He also has a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Texas at San Antonio. When he’s not researching technical topics, he’s most likely barbecuing in his backyard.