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.
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.
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.
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.
- 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.