1. The night before, rub brisket with salt and pepper mixture and let sit overnight in the fridge.
2. Take brisket out of fridge and bring to room temperature for half an hour. While you're waiting, light charcoal for the grill.
3. Boil some water for the drip tray.
4. Arrange some unlit charcoal in a long line around the edge of the grill. Optionally, sprinkle on some wood chips. Once lit charcoal has turned white, pour it at one end of the line.
5. After you have added the lit charcoal, place a drip tray in the middle of the grill and fill with boiled water.
6. Leave brisket to smoke for many hours (about 1 hour per pound). Grill temperature should be 250F-300F. Ideally, you want to smoke the brisket until is stays at 200 for 2 hours.
7. After a few hours of smoking, you can also pull the brisket off the grill and put it on a roasting pan (with more water underneath) in a 300F oven. Cover the roasting pan with foil at the beginning, and remove foil for the last two hours so that a crust can form. (You can also cook the brisket in the oven only, e.g. https://www.thekitchn.com/brisket-recipe-259081)

Notes

Sept 17 2022

• Cooked a 15.8 pound brisket for 12 hours, but it only hit 195F at the very end so it could have used 2 more hours. It was still relatively tender, but not quite melt-in-your-mouth.
• 7 hours in grill ~250F, 5 in oven at 300F (covered for first 2.5, uncovered for last 2.5).
• Made my line of charcoal in the grill 2 wide with a third right balanced in the middle of the lower two. The temp was a little low, and it struggled to keep going at a few points, so maybe do a double-layered line next time.