How long does it take to smoke a brisket?

At 225°F, the conventional figure for a packer brisket is 1.5–2 hours per pound, so a 12lb brisket is an 18–24 hour cook before resting. At 275°F the same brisket is 12–15 hours. Plan for the long end: finished brisket holds for hours in a cooler, but an unfinished one cannot be rushed.

What time should I start smoking to eat at 6pm?

Work backwards from the long end of the cook window and add the rest. A 12lb brisket at 225°F needs up to 24 hours of cook plus up to 4 hours of rest, so to eat at 6pm on Saturday you would light the smoker around 2pm on Friday — 28 hours earlier. Starting early costs nothing because the meat holds; starting late cannot be fixed.

What internal temperature is brisket done at?

Convention is to pull between 195°F and 205°F, but probe feel beats any number — it is ready when a probe slides into the flat with no resistance. The USDA safe minimum for whole-muscle beef is 145°F; the extra 50°F is about rendering connective tissue, not safety.

How many pellets does a long smoke use?

Roughly 0.75–1.25 lb an hour at 225°F, rising to around 2.5 lb an hour at 325°F. An 18–24 hour brisket cook at 225°F works out at 13.5–30 lb, so two 20lb bags. Cold and windy conditions push consumption higher.

Does wrapping a brisket make it cook faster?

Wrapping in foil or butcher paper pushes you toward the short end of the window by limiting evaporative cooling during the stall. It is not a fixed saving — the variation between cooks is larger than the difference wrapping makes, which is why the estimate stays a range either way.

Tool

Smoker Time Calculator

To work out when to light the smoker, take the long end of the cook window, add the rest, and subtract that from the time you want to eat. A 12lb brisket at 225°F is 18–24 hours of cook plus up to four hours of rest — so to serve at 6pm on Saturday, you are lighting it around 2pm on Friday.

Pick a cut and a serve time below and this becomes a clock time. For the the figures on their own, the smoking times chart has every cut and temperature without the arithmetic.

Why this gives you a range

The same 14lb brisket can finish two hours apart between cooks. Grade, fat cap, airflow, ambient temperature and how often the lid comes off all move the number, and none of them are things a calculator can see.

So this tool gives you a window rather than a time, and computes your start from the long end of it. That asymmetry is deliberate: finished barbecue will sit in a faux cambro for hours and arguably improve, while an unfinished brisket at dinner time is not a problem you can solve. Being early is recoverable. Being late is not.

A calculator that returned “9.4 hours” would feel more precise and be less true.

Cook times by cut

Hours per pound unless marked otherwise, at the temperatures we chart.

Published cook times, pull temperatures and USDA safe minimums by cut
Cut	225°F	250°F	275°F	Pull at	USDA min
Beef brisket (packer)	1.5–2	1.25–1.5	1–1.25	195–205°F	145°F
Pork shoulder / Boston butt	1.5–2	1.25–1.5	1–1.25	195–205°F	145°F
Pork spare ribstotal, not per pound	5–6	4–5	3.5–4.5	195–203°F	145°F
Baby back ribstotal, not per pound	4–5	3.5–4.5	3–4	195–203°F	145°F
Beef short ribs	1.5–2	1.25–1.75	1–1.5	200–210°F	145°F
Whole chicken	—	—	0.65–0.85	165–175°F	165°F
Whole turkey	—	—	0.5–0.65	165–175°F	165°F
Pork loin	0.6–0.8	0.5–0.7	0.4–0.6	145–150°F	145°F

Chicken and turkey are charted at 275–325°F rather than 225–275°F, because poultry skin does not render below about 275°F. Their columns are empty above by design, not by omission.

Where these numbers come from

The pull temperatures are a different kind of claim. 195–205°F for brisket is long-standing barbecue convention about where collagen renders, not a food-safety threshold and not something we have measured. We present it as convention because that is what it is.

Hours per pound is barbecue convention, not a published measurement. The one exception is whole turkey, where USDA estimates 20 to 30 minutes per pound in a smoker; for every other cut no institution publishes a rate and we do not imply one. Where you set a smoker temperature between two charted points the tool interpolates; outside the charted range it clamps to the nearest end and says so, rather than extrapolating a curve nobody published.

Common cooks, already worked out

The calculator above handles any weight and temperature. These are the ones people plan most often, each on its own page with the start time, the fuel and what to expect during the cook.

Every cut, weight and temperature — 90 of them.

Take these numbers outside

Every cut and temperature on one printable page, plus an email when we publish something worth your time.

We will send one email asking you to confirm. Nothing happens until you click the link in it, and every email after that has an unsubscribe link. Privacy policy.

Keep reading

Fuel for the cook you just planned

The pellet estimate above is in pounds, and a 20lb bag covers roughly one long brisket cook — not a season of them. These are the fuels in our catalogue, with what each manufacturer publishes about them.

Bear Mountain Hickory BBQ Pellets

Hardwood pellets with nothing else in them. The default fuel for any pellet grill.

Wood: 100% hardwood, hickory over an alder or oak base
Bag sizes: 20 lb and 40 lb

$$$$Hardwood pellets

Smoker Time Calculator

What are you cooking?

The cook

When do you want to eat?

Your cook

Internal temperature

Pellets

Why this gives you a range

Cook times by cut

Where these numbers come from

Common cooks, already worked out

Take these numbers outside

Keep reading

Why Brisket Stalls, and What to Do About It

Pellet, Ceramic or Charcoal?

Thermapen ONE vs Alpha Grillers

Choosing BBQ Fuel

Turkey Thawing Calculator

Fuel for the cook you just planned

What tells you it is done

Smokers these figures are drawn for

Common questions