Smoking calculator
Enter the cut, the weight, and your pit temperature to get a cook-time range, the stall window, a wrap point, and the clock time you need to light the fire. Work forward from when you start or backward from when you want to eat.
Local conditions
Off by default. Turning it on asks your browser where you are, or you can type a town instead. Nothing is requested until you do. Altitude then adjusts the cook time using the USDA figure; weather is described but never changes a number.
These are estimates. Cook to internal temperature, not to the clock — two cuts of identical weight can finish hours apart. USDA safe minimum for whole-muscle beef is 145F with a 3-minute rest. Brisket is taken far past this for texture.
Calculators by cut
Same maths, one cut each, with the timings, temperatures and mistakes that only apply to that cut.
How it works
Cook time scales with weight and inversely with pit temperature. The rates here are anchored at a 225F pit, so running 275F pulls the estimate down proportionally.
Wrapping a cut that stalls, in foil or butcher paper, ends the evaporative plateau early and takes roughly 20 percent off the total. The calculator applies that only to cuts that actually stall.
Racks and fillets do not scale with total weight. Two racks of ribs in the same pit take the same time as one rack, so those cuts use a fixed time range instead of a per-pound rate.
Rest is part of the plan, not an afterthought. A brisket wants an hour or more, and that hour is included in the start-by clock.
Altitude is the one piece of the outside world that changes the answer. USDA FSIS says meat cooked by moist heat can take up to a quarter longer at 5,000 feet, and in the same paragraph says oven roasting needs no adjustment at all. The stall is evaporative and wrapping is a braise, so that figure is applied to cuts that stall and withheld from cuts that do not. Turn on local conditions and the calculator will fetch your elevation and show the adjustment as its own line rather than folding it into the total.
What it assumes
- Cuts come out of the fridge, not off the counter, and go on a pit already at temperature.
- The pit holds its temperature. Wind, a cold day, and opening the lid every twenty minutes all push you toward the long end of the range. Local conditions will describe the weather where you are, but it deliberately changes none of the numbers: nobody has published how many minutes a fifteen mile an hour wind adds to a brisket, so this site will not pretend to know.
- The range is the answer. A single number would be a lie: two briskets of the same weight can finish two hours apart.
Questions
Roughly 60 to 90 minutes per pound at 225F, so a 12 lb packer runs about 12 to 18 hours, plus at least an hour of rest. Wrapping at the stall pulls that toward the short end.
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