My uncle said my brisket tasted like a campfire log and he was right, so I quit wrapping in foil
He told me at a cookout in Tulsa last month that I was trapping all that bitter creosote smoke inside the foil instead of letting it breathe. Switched to butcher paper on my last two cooks and the bark finally tastes like beef instead of ash. Anybody else here swear by paper over foil, or am I just late to the party?
Switched to paper a few years back and honestly it was not the magic fix everyone online swore it would be. The real problem was my fire, I was running a dirty smoldering pile of wood and no wrapper on earth can save meat from that, paper or foil. Foil actually gave me better results once I cleaned up my burn and started cooking on hot coals instead of choking the fire down. Paper does let the bark dry out nicer, I will give you that, but it also lets a lot more moisture escape and I have had flats come out dry because of it. Your uncle was right about creosote being nasty, but that stuff comes from bad smoke, not from foil trapping it in. Blaming the foil is kind of like blaming the bucket when your roof is leaking.