Kept holding my breath the whole time at my first 3 tier too. I put the tiers on their boards and dowels the night before and literally didn't sleep because I kept picturing the whole thing sliding off in the car. Ended up driving 10 mph under the speed limit with it on the passenger seat floor so it wouldn't tip. When I finally saw it sitting straight on the table I just stood there staring at it for like 5 minutes.

Old timer advice is almost always worth listening to. They've been doing this stuff since before YouTube existed. I had a guy at a competition tell me to stop wrapping my ribs in foil, said it makes the meat mushy. I laughed it off at first but tried it his way for a chicken cook and the texture was way better. Now I only wrap if I'm running behind on time. That quarter inch fat rule he gave you is gold too. Most online videos show you that perfect trimmed brisket but they don't show you the juice loss. Sometimes the old school methods beat the Instagram trends every single time.

Yeah but @sam_hart, I kinda think wrapping early defeats the whole point of bark building.

how cold did the water actually get? im curious cause i used the ice cube trick just once and it helped a little but not nearly as much as you're describing. i was worried about diluting the dough so i only kept the ice in for maybe 30 seconds. seems like you left em in a lot longer? also did you measure the temp or just eyeball it? cause if im gonna try again i wanna know exactly how cold is cold enough without going overboard and making the fat too hard to cut in

Ever wonder if they just slap those things on at the end of the assembly line? My last one was off by almost 40 degrees on the low end, made everything cook way too fast. I just gave up and got a good digital probe for the grate level. What did you end up doing to check your temps?