I like big butts and I cannot lie...

[New2Cue]

Smoked an 8-pounder yesterday. Took a solid 8 hours - part of the problem is I had done some heavy yard work that morning, and fell asleep in the afternoon, and woke up to find the PBC sitting at 200. Tasted amazing. I bought the butt fresh at a butcher, and it tasted a little more flavorful and juicier than the store bought butts that I have been making. Scored lots of points with the in-laws!

[Chuck]

Didn't mean to make you think that....I alays wrap at 160ish. For this 10 ponder, it took 6 hrs to reach 162 with an avg temp of 235-240, after cruching i cranked it to 360+ and it was an additional 2 hrs to finish at 203.

[Dilla]

Too soon to wrap I think. I would wait till it gets to about 150*.

[Chuck]

Smoked a 10 pound pork butt today. Went on at 9:30am, was at 195 at 6:30pm. Was an interesting cook. I have been having a lot of problems getting temps up in my PBC, where it seemed to like to settle in around 230.

There's nothing wrong with cooking a butt low and slow at 230......as long as I can keep it between 230 and 250....perfect. I have a 10 pounder hanging right now at 232. Hung it at 10:30am, the internal temp was at 50 deg, it's been on for one hour and the internal temp is now at 82 deg.....that's a one degree rise every 2 minutes, not bad. Not sure if I will wrap or not just yet.

[New2Cue]

I haven't had wild swings in temp on my PBC. Settles right at 270-280. I have a fenced in area, though. We'll see if the wind picks up sometime, like this winter.

Of course I smoke in the winter. Nothing like grilling in a deep freeze.

I'm still very much a novice to this PBC/smoker thing, but I'm fairly convinced that wind and humidity plays a big role in the temps. My PBC is in front of my detached garage which sits behind and to the right of my house at the end of a fairly long driveway. I sometimes can get a nice wind tunnel effect along the driveway and house. Watching my Maverick on Sunday, the temp of the PBC would jump 10 degrees, then cycle back down fairly quickly and continually during the breezy morning.

That afternoon, the humidity levels jumped quite a bit and the wind was gone. Not coincidentally I don't think, the PBC temps quickly started falling.

[New2Cue]

Love the shout out to Lil Sumptin Sumptin. One of my favorite all time beers! Curious whether you noticed any difference in using such a high quality brew or if you think you would have been just as well off using a bud light (or apple juice or broth) and keeping the Lagunitas for yourself.

Hey R2-Meat2 (awesome name by the way!), great to meet someone on here who not only has good taste in cue, but also in adult beverages

I haven't tried using apple juice or broth, and I refuse to stock bud lite in my house, so I can't speak to lesser quality beers. I've only used beer for my pork butts and for when I [used to] cook whole chickens in the oven on the Weber poultry infuser. I don't know how much it impacts the flavor profile of the meat, but the au jus left in the foil still had a little bit of that Lil Sumptin Sumptin taste to it. Using it for the pork butt gives me an excuse to open a beer during the cook also

I don't know if this is kosher or not, but on the day of the cook, I like to spoon a little of the au jus onto my pork and eat it with a little BBQ sauce. I also pour most of the au jus onto the pork leftovers after I shred the rest of the butt and put it in a container. Noah mentioned putting BBQ sauce on the leftovers, but I think I prefer the au jus to help keep things moist. Plus, folks in my household like different types of BBQ sauce - my wife tends to go with sweeter sauces, while I like things with a bit of heat (so far my go-to has been Stubb's Sweet Heat). My little girls of course like their pork, and pretty much anything, with ketchup

[R2-Meat2]

Love the shout out to Lil Sumptin Sumptin. One of my favorite all time beers! Curious whether you noticed any difference in using such a high quality brew or if you think you would have been just as well off using a bud light (or apple juice or broth) and keeping the Lagunitas for yourself.

[mackdaddy]

I too like my Butts big. That looked "scrumptious", to quote Mr. Potts.

[Jay in Ames]

I haven't had wild swings in temp on my PBC. Settles right at 270-280. I have a fenced in area, though. We'll see if the wind picks up sometime, like this winter.

Of course I smoke in the winter. Nothing like grilling in a deep freeze.

[New2Cue]

Looks good! You guys stress too much over temps in the PBC.

My in-laws were over and getting hungry

[David Parrish]

Looks good! You guys stress too much over temps in the PBC.

[fzxdoc]

"Pulled Pork Goodness" indeed! Looks great New2Cue !

Kathryn

[fuzzydaddy]

That's a beautiful butt!

[DWCowles]

Looks good to me...BTW I like big butts too

[New2Cue]

Smoked a 10 pound pork butt today. Went on at 9:30am, was at 195 at 6:30pm. Was an interesting cook. I have been having a lot of problems getting temps up in my PBC, where it seemed to like to settle in around 230. I used Kingsford competition yesterday for chicken, and was able to get 325 degrees.

Today I went with regular blue and white Kingsford. I used Kathryn's method of heating the PBC, and the temps got really hot quickly. It hit 399, I covered it, and within seconds it went to 450. I thought it would come down to the typical range, but it settled around 375! I ended up closing the bottom vent a bit more, turned the PBC so that the vent side was facing the garage (and less open to breezes) and had to plug the rebar holes with tin foil to get it to settle around 325. A few hours later, it was at 275 for a good spell, then it dropped pretty quickly to 230. I had to prop the lid open to get the temps up a bit as I had a house full of hungry people.

The only thing I can think that was different was that this morning, there was a good breeze and low humidity. For most of my cooks the humidity has been fairly high. This afternoon the humidity picked up pretty significantly, and the temps started falling fairly rapidly.

All in all, was another great pork butt. I thought about cutting it in half given it's size, but it was bone-in and I didn't want to screw things up with a bad cut. But 9 hours in the PBC wasn't too bad. I hit a pretty big stall at 158 degrees again like my last butt. This time I wrapped it during the stall rather than riding it out. Wrapped it tightly in tin foil, added a little of my favorite beer, Lagunitas "Little Sumptin Sumptin", and had amazing au jus at the end. Hard to beat pulled pork out of the PBC!