Maud · 1,000 gal
The workhorse since 2019. Runs briskets and pork shoulders overnight, every night we're open. Her left door squeaks; we've decided it's good luck.
Our pit · Est. 2017
Fire doesn't take weekends off.
Nine years, two pits, one rule: if the fire isn't right, nothing goes on the grate. This is the story of a trailer that outgrew its parking spot.
The story
From a folding table to Foundry Street
Ember & Ash started because Reyna Castillo couldn't find brisket in Austin that tasted like her uncle's in Lockhart. So in 2017 she bought a used 500-gallon offset, parked it behind a friend's bar on East Sixth, and sold out of forty pounds in ninety minutes.
The line came back the next weekend, and the one after. What the trailer taught us still runs the place: buy the best packers you can afford, burn seasoned post oak down to coals, and never let the pit run hotter than the meat can handle. Patience is the whole recipe. Everything else is seasoning.
In 2021 we signed the lease on an old ironworks shop at 412 Foundry Street — a building that already smelled like fire — and moved the pits into the yard under the water tower. The folding table retired. The rule didn't.
The timeline
Nine years of smoke
2017
The trailer
A used 500-gallon offset, a folding table, and forty pounds of brisket behind a bar on East Sixth. Sold out in ninety minutes.
2019
Maud arrives
Our first thousand-gallon pit, welded in Lexington and named for Reyna's grandmother. Capacity tripled; the line got longer anyway.
2021
Foundry Street
The old ironworks shop becomes home: a counter, twelve tables, and a smoke yard under the water tower.
2024
Slate joins the yard
A second thousand-gallon offset ends the era of Saturday heartbreak — mostly. Beef ribs still sell out.
2026
Top 50
Texas Monthly puts us on the list. Reyna taped the page to the walk-in door and told everyone to get back to work.
The hardware
Meet the pits
Slate · 1,000 gal
The 2024 addition, quarter-inch steel with a taller stack. Handles ribs, turkey, and sausage — the daytime shift — plus beef ribs on Saturdays.
One night, hour by hour
The overnight
Every brisket you eat at noon started here the night before. This is the schedule that never changes.
- 9 PM
- Trim. Forty packers broken down by hand, fat caps taken to a quarter inch. Salt and coarse pepper — nothing else.
- 11 PM
- Fire. First splits of seasoned post oak burn down to a coal bed. Meat goes on when the smoke runs thin and blue.
- 2 AM
- The long middle. The overnight crew feeds the fire every forty minutes and reads the stacks. Playlist privileges rotate weekly.
- 5 AM
- Wrap. Each brisket hits the stall and gets wrapped in butcher paper, one at a time, by feel.
- 6 AM
- Ribs and turkey go on Slate. Sausage follows at eight. The kitchen starts beans and cornbread inside.
- 10:45 AM
- Rest ends. First briskets come off the hold, the knife gets a final pass, and the doors open at eleven sharp.
The pitmaster
Reyna Castillo
Third-generation Lockhart, first-generation Austin. Reyna learned fire management from her uncle's pit room before she could drive, spent six years cooking lines downtown, and still trims every Saturday's briskets herself.
"You can't rush a brisket and you can't fake one. That's why I like them better than most people."
— Reyna, somewhere around 3 AM
Taste the story
The pits are already lit
Tonight's fire is tomorrow's brisket. Come stand in the line — it moves faster than it looks, and the smell is part of the meal.