Every once in a while a piece of meat comes across my radar that borders on insanity. In a good way though. The Japanese A5 Wagyu Full Packer briskets from Crowd Cow fit that bill.
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Before we really get into it let me give you a quick Japanese A5 Wagyu primer. In a nutshell A5 is the highest grade given to Japanese cattle. These cattle are fed differently and cared for much differently than American cattle and are a specific breed that has some crazy marbling. In many regards you can’t get a better, more marbled piece of meat than an A5 Wagyu cut of beef. If you want to know a bit more about grading Wagyu beef and what “A5” means check out this post: Grading American Wagyu Beef. I also wrote on Crowd Cow A5 Wagyu beef.
Don’t confuse Japanese A5 Wagyu with “American Wagyu”. American Wagyu is most often an American Angus cattle bred with a Japanese cattle. They produce some amazing meat but the marbling, texture, and flavor are vastly different than true Japanese A5.
OK, now let’s talk about these Japanese A5 Wagyu Full Packer briskets available for the first time from Crowd Cow. For the past couple years Crowd Cow has worked directly with farms in the Kagoshima province of Japan to import 100% authentic Japanese Wagyu beef. There are very, very few other places I know of that import as much Japanese Wagyu beef as Crowd Cow.
If you want some other real Japanese A5 Wagyu steaks check out Where to buy Japanese A5 Wagyu Beef
A few days back they announced that for the first time they will be importing some full packer briskets from the ranches in Kagoshima. Take a look at this beautiful piece of meat:
Look at the marbling on that thing! And you can tell just looking at the fat that this is a special piece of meat.
For a long time many experts said you couldn’t smoke an A5 brisket because it had TOO much marbling and intermuscular fat. But Crowd Cow has tried a few of these themselves and say it cooked up in the smoker excellent.
A couple things on these briskets:
- They are HUGE. The full packers will run about 30 pounds. Most American briskets are in the 12-16 lb range. Why are these so big? Most of it has to do with different styles of butchering. The Japanese “seam cut” where they use the natural divisions in the muscles to separate the carcasses. American butchery usually involves band saws and cutting the meat into what we normally see in the meat case. The seam cutting results in a much longer flat and some “extra” meat on the point that is muscles from the neck. You could trim that off to have a more familiar looking brisket but Crowd Cow suggest just leaving it on and enjoying it.
Crowd Cow will be selling full packers and half packers which are cut lengthwise and will weigh around 15 pounds or so. - They are expensive. Most of the A5 Wagyu beef from Crowd Cow runs $100-200 per pound. Crowd Cow currently has a 12 lb A5 Wagyu brisket flat for $750 . So the full packer will easily be into 4 figures. Definitely not something you will cook up for an every day meal but it would be a once in a lifetime experience. Some of the half packers will be as low as $600 but the price goes up from there depending on the size.
Here are a few videos Crowd Cow put together featuring BBQ legend, TV show host, and cookbook author Steven Raichlen walking through trimming these Japanese A5 briskets, smoking them, and slicing them:
Trimming an A5 Japanese Wagyu Brisket
Smoking an A5 Japanese Wagyu Brisket
Cutting an A5 Japanese Wagyu Brisket
If you are interested in seeing what the half packer looks like they also have a video showing that and how they trimmed it
Japanese A5 Wagyu: Trimming a Half Packer Brisket
You can see that these things are monsters but once you get them trimmed they definitely resemble regular briskets but are much larger. I know I would be intimidated with a $1000+ piece of meat but as long as you are conservative in your trimming and use a good thermometer to keep track of your temperatures you can pretty much treat these like you would a normal brisket. I would think they would be done a few degrees before a regular brisket so I would be looking for 195-200 degrees and really jiggly.
And here’s an idea… If you don’t want to pay for the whole thing get 10 or 20 friends together, buy a bunch of beers, split the cost of the brisket, and have a party around the smoker! $50 or even $100 per person is much more palatable than $1000+.
These Japanese A5 Briskets from Crowd Cow are very, very limited so if you want more information be sure to go to the Japanese A5 Wagyu Packer Brisket page on their site and sign up to be notified. Or if you are seeing this after they have sold out you should be able to sign up for future releases. I believe these will go on sale on July 1st at 9 AM Pacific time. If you sign up to be notified jump on it right away if you want one.
Are you going to be one of the few lucky people in the world that has ever had a smoked Japanese A5 Wagyu brisket? If you get one from Crowd Cow please, please, please drop me a note and let me know what you thought.
If you want some other options to buy some real Japanese A5 Wagyu steaks (not brisket) check out this post: Where to buy Japanese A5 Wagyu Beef
