Glossary
The stall
A long plateau, often around 150 to 170 degrees Fahrenheit, when evaporation halts a cook's temperature rise.
The stall is a well-known point in a long, low and slow cook, usually somewhere around 150 to 170 degrees Fahrenheit, where the internal temperature of a large cut like brisket or pork shoulder seems to stop climbing for an hour or more even though the smoker is holding a steady temperature. It can look like something has gone wrong, but it is a normal and expected part of smoking big cuts.
The cause is evaporative cooling. As moisture on the surface of the meat evaporates into the smoker's airflow, it pulls heat away from the meat at roughly the same rate the smoker is adding it, so the internal temperature holds flat until enough surface moisture has evaporated for the balance to tip back in favor of the smoker again. Humid air or a wrapped cut can shorten or avoid the stall.
Many cooks wrap the meat in foil or butcher paper once the stall begins, sometimes called the Texas crutch, which traps moisture and lets the temperature climb again faster, at some cost to bark. The main mistake is panicking and cranking the heat way up during a stall, which risks drying out the exterior without actually shortening the wait by very much.