I also smoked a turkey(among other things,LOL!!) for Thanksgiving. It was kind of an experimental bird. The bird was 24lbs.!!! It was too big to smoke in my opinion. I would rather do 2 12lb'ers. I brined it for 24hrs in a water, kosher salt, brown sugar solution. It went on the cooker at about 9:15pm(hence experimental). I use a Weber Smokey Mountain cooker. Fired up 2 chimneys of charcoal and threw in what seemed like half a cord of apple and cherry(4 fist sized chunks). The cook I was copying called for 350 degrees, the highest temp I could attain was 310. The bird finished up about 4:00am. My intentions were to just make sandwich fixins out of the whole thing. When I cut into the first breast, the juices just started running out, I was amazed at how moist it was. being as the bird was 24lbs, I dont think it brined consistently and I dont think the smoke penetrated meat consistently either. I did however inject brine into the breasts. I think this made them moister than they would have come out if I didnt. Next time I am going to cook smaller birds and cook them for a meal rather than for deli meat. Something else I want to do is buy 6-8 breasts, brine and smoke them the same way and run them thru the slicer.

h&c: what kind of temps were you running inside the cooker? Was your brine just salt water?