Bayou,
For brisket, I just rub it down with some oil then hit it heavily with kosher salt, coarse ground peppe, and might add onion and garlic powder. As for temps to cook at, you'll get a bazillion answers for that. I prefer to go with higher temps like 275 and above just because it's quicker. That said, I really am non committal on it. All temps work.
Here's my method for what it's worth.
- Fire up the smoker to whatever temp you want, be it anywhere from 200 degrees to 300+.
- Put brisket in smoker
- Cook brisket until it's done, which is when a temp probe will go through the thickest part of the flat with little to no resistance, like a knife through room temp butter.
- Remove brisket from smoker and place on counter for 20 mins or so to vent heat and start cooling down.
- Wrap brisket and let it rest for an hour or more.
With that said, if you run with a chamber temp of 250 or less, you will hit what is known as "the stall". This is where the brisket undergoes evaporative cooling and usually happens around 150 - 160ish degrees. Basically, it's sweating to cool off. The internal temp will stop climbing and will hover or might even drop at this point. When you get here, you have a number of choices. You can crank the heat up and/or wrap with foil to power through the stall. Or, you can just crack open a beer / pour yourself a drink, sit back and wait it out. It's your choice. If you cook at 275 or higher, you'll either minimize the stall or avoid it completely.
Another reason that some people wrap is to preserve the look of the brisket. They reach a point where they like the way the brisket looks and they don't want it to get any darker, nor take on any more smoke. So, they wrap with foil or butcher paper. One drawback of wrapping with foil is that it could mess up your "bark" by softening it. This is due to the steam inside the foil. One way to fix this is to remove the brisket from the foil about 1 hour before it's "done" and put it back into the smoker to firm up the bark.
Everything that has been talked about in the last two paragraphs will affect the timing of your cook, but they won't change steps 3,4 or 5 listed previously. Lo and slow or hot and fast; naked or foiled/wrapped, you still need to cook the brisket until it's done, let it cool down a bit and then rest.
