Tool
Smoker Time Calculator
To work out when to light the smoker, take the long end of the published 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.
What are you cooking?
The cook
Usually 10–18lb.
Charted for 225–275°F.
Smoker temperature against the heat scale
When do you want to eat?
Your cook
Start by
Pick a serve time and this becomes a clock time.
Based on the long end of the window — finished barbecue holds for hours in a cooler, but it cannot be hurried.
- Cook
- 18h – 24h
- Rest
- 1h – 4h
- Total
- 19h – 28h
Internal temperature
- USDA safe minimum
- 145°F
- Pull at
- 195–205°F
Pellets
13.5–30 lb
Buy 2 × 20lb bags. Cold or windy days push this higher.
Probe for feel rather than a number — it is done when a probe slides into the flat with no resistance, which can happen anywhere in the 195–205°F band.
- Unwrapped, this cut will stall somewhere around 150–170°F and can sit there for hours. Plan for the long end of the window.
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 these figures are published for.
| 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 comes from published cook charts. 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 questions
- How long does it take to smoke a brisket?
- At 225°F, published charts put a packer brisket at 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 published 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.