OK, this is not a controlled experiment, but it so happened I had a cook planned for today using a Kurobuta pork butt from CrowdCow, 3.9lb/1/8kg, bone-in. That's a small butt, and my game plan was to go minimalist: dry brine overnight and then a very light dusting of rub, to let the heritage pork flavor take center stage. Then I read that thread about whether to spritz/mop etc., and decided it would enhance my minimalism to skip the spritzes I'd done in my previous butt smokes.
Nice thing about my Pit Boss vertical p-smoker: makes it drop dead easy to do a simple smoke like this while sitting on virtual meetings all day. Ran at 250F/121C using a Cookin' Pellets blend. It got to the stall after a few hours, and I let it go for a few more until the bark was looking good, then wrapped in butcher paper the rest of the way, with final T about 202F/94C. Between that and no spritzing, it was out of the smoker in 8.5 hours, a good 2 hours less than any butt I've done yet (but see below).
About 2 hours in.
About five hours in and ready to wrap.
I left the wrapped butt out on the counter for half an hour after pulling it out, during which the IT drifted down to about 180F/82C, then into the FC for a couple of hours.
The heritage pork flavor was tremendous! But this was the leanest butt I've ever eaten for sure. Some of it was almost like loin. Definitely better suited to slicing than pulling.
Here's the temperature profile from the Meater+. The big drop is when I pulled to wrap it, and I bumped up the set point to 275 for a while to accelerate equilibration through the butcher paper, then returned it to 250.
Nice thing about my Pit Boss vertical p-smoker: makes it drop dead easy to do a simple smoke like this while sitting on virtual meetings all day. Ran at 250F/121C using a Cookin' Pellets blend. It got to the stall after a few hours, and I let it go for a few more until the bark was looking good, then wrapped in butcher paper the rest of the way, with final T about 202F/94C. Between that and no spritzing, it was out of the smoker in 8.5 hours, a good 2 hours less than any butt I've done yet (but see below).
About 2 hours in.
About five hours in and ready to wrap.
I left the wrapped butt out on the counter for half an hour after pulling it out, during which the IT drifted down to about 180F/82C, then into the FC for a couple of hours.
The heritage pork flavor was tremendous! But this was the leanest butt I've ever eaten for sure. Some of it was almost like loin. Definitely better suited to slicing than pulling.
Here's the temperature profile from the Meater+. The big drop is when I pulled to wrap it, and I bumped up the set point to 275 for a while to accelerate equilibration through the butcher paper, then returned it to 250.
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