A judge at the Kansas City Royal told me my brisket was 'clean but boring' and it stung for a week
I cooked my first competition brisket at the American Royal in Kansas City back in 2022 and walked away with a comment card I still have pinned in my garage. The judge wrote 'clean smoke, tender, but boring, no reason to remember it.' I was mad for about a week because I had spent 14 hours babying that thing on my offset, wrapping at 165, resting it 3 hours in a cooler. Then I sat down and really thought about it. My brisket was safe. I was cooking to not mess up instead of cooking to stand out. So I changed two things. First, I bumped my salt and coarse black pepper ratio and stopped being shy with it, and second, I started spritzing with a 50/50 mix of apple cider vinegar and water every 45 minutes after the 4 hour mark instead of just once. Two contests later I placed 7th out of 62 teams in brisket, which is not a trophy but it is a jump from dead middle. Anybody else get a comment card that made them rethink their whole rub game?