OmegaDog12 - As tbob4 asked - Are you going to be cooking/serving on site at about the same time or are you just cooking and then portioning and delivering/pickup at a later time?
If the latter then that gives you a lot more flexibility, especially if you can pull/vac seal/store the meat beforehand.
Personally, I have never prepared that many butts at one time. I'll defer to the comments from those that have. If nobody here chimes in I suggest that you go over to the BBQ Brethren forum - lots of folks there have done this sort of cook and can help with calculating how many butts you should likely buy.
As far as the KBQ I have never maxed mine out. I've never cooked more than two butts at a time. I have done a bunch of ribs (8 - 2 per shelf).
Assuming you have just the four standard shelves you can probably fit three 8 pound-ish butts per shelf without any difficulty. You probably wouldn't have to rotate them but it is easy to slide a shelf out after a few hours to see if perhaps any of the butts in the back are looking any "crispier". Sometimes when I do baby backs I do find that on some of the racks the back ends are getting a bit more heat and I will just pull out the whole shelf and rotate it and slide it back in.
You'd also want to pay attention to how the bottom shelf is cooking (it will be hotter down there) and you may need to move the bottom shelf to the top, the top shelf to the bottom, etc.
With three butts per shelve you will want some extra hands available to help work with the shelves if you did want/need to rotate them or swap their placement vertically. The stock KBQ shelves are a bit flimsy feeling when they are partially slid out form the cook box and you have a big hunk of meat like a butt hanging out.
I've read widely varying opinions on just how much finished product to really expect from each pound of uncooked butt so you'll want to err on the side of cooking too many butts than not enough.
While you could probably fit 12 butts in the KBQ at a time I have no idea how much that would impact the airflow. The convection fan that is always running helps keep the air moving but fully loaded it might be hindered to the point where cooking will take much longer while burning a lot more fuel.
​​​​​​​Hopefully Ernest may chime in and offer his insights.
If the latter then that gives you a lot more flexibility, especially if you can pull/vac seal/store the meat beforehand.
Personally, I have never prepared that many butts at one time. I'll defer to the comments from those that have. If nobody here chimes in I suggest that you go over to the BBQ Brethren forum - lots of folks there have done this sort of cook and can help with calculating how many butts you should likely buy.
As far as the KBQ I have never maxed mine out. I've never cooked more than two butts at a time. I have done a bunch of ribs (8 - 2 per shelf).
Assuming you have just the four standard shelves you can probably fit three 8 pound-ish butts per shelf without any difficulty. You probably wouldn't have to rotate them but it is easy to slide a shelf out after a few hours to see if perhaps any of the butts in the back are looking any "crispier". Sometimes when I do baby backs I do find that on some of the racks the back ends are getting a bit more heat and I will just pull out the whole shelf and rotate it and slide it back in.
You'd also want to pay attention to how the bottom shelf is cooking (it will be hotter down there) and you may need to move the bottom shelf to the top, the top shelf to the bottom, etc.
With three butts per shelve you will want some extra hands available to help work with the shelves if you did want/need to rotate them or swap their placement vertically. The stock KBQ shelves are a bit flimsy feeling when they are partially slid out form the cook box and you have a big hunk of meat like a butt hanging out.
I've read widely varying opinions on just how much finished product to really expect from each pound of uncooked butt so you'll want to err on the side of cooking too many butts than not enough.
While you could probably fit 12 butts in the KBQ at a time I have no idea how much that would impact the airflow. The convection fan that is always running helps keep the air moving but fully loaded it might be hindered to the point where cooking will take much longer while burning a lot more fuel.
​​​​​​​Hopefully Ernest may chime in and offer his insights.
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