A judge at the Royal told me my brisket was "undercooked by a full hour" and I have not stopped thinking about it
I placed 14th out of 42 teams at a KCBS event in Waco last month, and the only feedback I got was from a table captain who pulled me aside and said my slices had a gray band about a quarter inch thick. He said it wasn't the rub or the wood, I was pulling too early because I was cooking to a number instead of probing it. I started poking the flat with an ice pick at 197 degrees instead of trusting my thermapen, and my next cook finally gave me that clean jiggle I'd been chasing for two years. Now I'm second guessing every brisket I ever turned in. Anybody else get torn apart by a judge and actually come out better for it?
How thick was that gray band exactly, and did you notice it more on the flat or the point? I ask because a quarter inch sounds like it could also be a wrap timing thing or even how long you rested before slicing. Once you switched to the ice pick at 197, did you end up cooking longer than you used to, or did it just tell you when to pull sooner than the thermapen did? Really curious whether the probe trick changed your finish temp across the board or just on that one cook.