I brined my turkey in salt water for 24 hours before going on the smoker. I filled the hopper with hickory pellets, set it on medium and let it go. I put the 12lb bird on the smoker at 7:30 and pulled it at 11:00, the temp was 173. Now I have cooked many turkeys in the past, in the oven, the rotisserie, and fried. This bird was by far the best, everyone agreed this was the most tender, moist, flavorful turkey they have ever had. I dont think I will do a turkey another way ever again. The only downside was that the skin wasnt very edible it was kind of rubbery, which was fine for me because I usually skip the skin any way.

I also smoked a turkey(among other things,LOL!!) for Thanksgiving. It was kind of an experimental bird. The bird was 24lbs.!!! It was too big to smoke in my opinion. I would rather do 2 12lb'ers. I brined it for 24hrs in a water, kosher salt, brown sugar solution. It went on the cooker at about 9:15pm(hence experimental). I use a Weber Smokey Mountain cooker. Fired up 2 chimneys of charcoal and threw in what seemed like half a cord of apple and cherry(4 fist sized chunks). The cook I was copying called for 350 degrees, the highest temp I could attain was 310. The bird finished up about 4:00am. My intentions were to just make sandwich fixins out of the whole thing. When I cut into the first breast, the juices just started running out, I was amazed at how moist it was. being as the bird was 24lbs, I dont think it brined consistently and I dont think the smoke penetrated meat consistently either. I did however inject brine into the breasts. I think this made them moister than they would have come out if I didnt. Next time I am going to cook smaller birds and cook them for a meal rather than for deli meat. Something else I want to do is buy 6-8 breasts, brine and smoke them the same way and run them thru the slicer.

h&c: what kind of temps were you running inside the cooker? Was your brine just salt water?

Yep, I brined a 22 pounder for 36 hours, Apple juice, water, brown sugar, black pepper. Then put the traeger on smoke mode and ran it for just over 9 hours and pulled it off at 150, breast temp and it finished at 158 on the table.

Juicy as heck and the flavor was to die for!

Keith

I actually brined mine in just salt water and cooked it on Medium which is supposed to be around 325. I pulled it at 170ish.