This is the real sleeper in this thread. I love my Thermapen, but combustion.inc looks pretty awesome for grilling/smoking. In particular, it could be a game changer with the SafeCook time+temp food safety calculations. And bellows that take into account the internal, food ambient, and grill lid temp could be bonkers. The ($125) sensor probe has 8 sensors in it to read temps at different depths and the ambient.
I get that, I spent a long time obsessing over the $100 ThermaPen One, because the $15 ones I had were "good enough". But, I'll tell you, it's quite a nice luxury for someone who cooks all the time. It just has all the rough edges removed: it's super fast, the display rotates, it does auto on/off, and the support has been superb. In this situation, I had to return it twice over the last year because of what turned out to be a design flaw where the case was cracking (apparently for no good reason, not like I was overheating it).
I try to manually do the time@temp safety thing, but admittedly I usually overcook it just to be safe. So, I could see the combustion.inc being a game changer for grilling especially, and I already get rave reviews. I'm going to pick one up, and possibly also one of their grill thermometers.
The CI predictive thermometer actually does one better than the time@temp method for food safety. It integrates the temperature with respect to time (a method it calls SafeCook) and it does so with its estimate of the core temperature (based on which of the 8 sensors shows the slowest responding temp curve).
The previous comment about it being a cooking thermometer for nerds is bang on! I dunno how much it really helps improve my cooking but it gives me an incredible feeling of being in control! I love it!
A word of caution for cooking tough meats like brisket: temperature doesn't tell the whole story. People online will talk about "the stall" but it doesn't actually exist. You'll find the temperature graph over time follows a logistic curve, something you would expect for any process that reaches an equilibrium.
The truth is rather complicated [1]. Most of the barbecue masters use temperature as a guideline but actual tests of tenderness as the final arbiter. They cook until the meat reaches a particular temperature and then begin checking for tenderness at regular intervals. The process can vary a lot even between two briskets of the same weight, purchased at the same time, due to individual differences between animals (the amount of connective tissues and collagenases present in the meat at cooking time).
Still, having the temperature information helps a lot, especially the surface and ambient temperatures provided by the CI probe. This can help you maintain the cooking temperature much more accurately to avoid excessive dryout.
I agree with everything you say, but I'll say I've definitely observed "the stall" while cooking brisket (which I do rarely) and butt roast (much more frequently). By that I mean, seat of the pants, the temp is going up and up and up and then sits there for a few hours before starting to go up again.
I cook on a kamado, and generally don't have the fuel and patience for a brisket, so I just don't tend to do them. I prefer to just do the whole thing on the fire, but my ideal brisket would probably be ~12 hours in the kamado, then 12 (or more) hours in the oven. But for whatever reason, I just don't like doing that. "Feels like cheating" or whatever. So butt roast and turkey and prime rib are really my go-tos.
