Cooked my first ever brisket.

17 pounds / 8kg from Costco, trimmed somewhat. I had found a charcoal/truffle rub in NZ that I mixed with fresh ground salt n pepper, applied a day before.

Cooked with pecan smoking chunks, at a (dome temp) temp of 275F (135C) for the first 4 hours then 300F(150C) for another 3.5 hours in the foil boat. Fat side up, with a Kickstarter Meater in the top. Wrapped in wax paper, then towel tight into an Esky for 3.5 hours to rest.

Served perfectly rendered fatty strips in time to see the ABs keep the Eden park record alive vs the pumas.

Learning: Next time won't use the fancy rub. I definitely would just use salt n pepper next time.

I filled the basket with a decent amount of charcoal chunks. It barely used any of that on the cook and cool after, could probably cook two more briskets back to back with what's left.

Gloves to handle the meat is way easier than trying to move a hot 7kg blob of meat.

Anyone considering giving this a go: it was way easier than I thought it would be. But you need enough people to help eat it. We tried with 4 and barely made a dent.

Sadly I am located in a country with a Murdoch hold on the F1 rights (Australia, and barely HD kayo), and because of this F1TV pro is not available here. We only get the option for live timing.

A few questions I thought some of the lemmy crew might know the answers to:

• First, is this an Ok place to ask these questions on how to get access? Don't want to upset the mods etc. if this isn't, where might be a better place?
• In the past I have seen mention of using a VPN to another location (India, turkey etc), and then using something like Google pay to subscribe for an entire year. This i believe also just worked when not on VPN after subscribing, which was appealing (as setting a VPN for the TV and mucking about at 1am is not). But I had also seen that F1TV cracked down on this also, so it may not work again.
• Any other decent live stream options? I was an initial and long time user of "Hendo and his mates" "Race Tarting" crew which was amazing for the few years that worked.

Keen to hear what the community does or thoughts on what options are out there.