OK, I decided to take the plunge into smoking pork butts this week. I picked up a 9# in cryo-vac at the local supermarket (Meijer generally has good meats, but I prefer Costco... but the price was $1.98/lb on sale. Meijer it is!) on Friday night, and trimmed and dry-brined Saturday morning. 1/2 tsp per pound of kosher salt looked like a ton at first, but by the time I was done I realized it was just right. This was bone-in, BTW. 9#, but I trimmed MAYBE 1/2# off. Covered it with plastic wrap in a Pyrex dish and into the fridge it went.
Wifey wasn't happy I used this as an excuse to skip church today... Fired up a little less than a half chimney of Kingsford blue (new bag last week), and set up my Weber 22" kettle for the 'snake' method, with two trails on the bottom and TWO trails on the top (I can't hit 225F for the life of me without that additional line of briquettes). Grabbed five chunks (fist-sized) of applewood and laid them out for the first three hours. I then added a big drip pan in the middle, with a small amount of hot water, and a smaller pan up top for humidity for the first three hours of smoking. Dumped on the hot coals, scrubbed down the grate and warmed it all up.
Took the butt out of the fridge at 39F, and put MMD on it without any additional water (it was pretty damp from the salting). Sat it for about 10 minutes, then onto the grill at about 235F. I waited about 15-20 minutes to let the temps in the grill stabilize before tweaking the vents to bring it to 225F. Temps were tested with an ET-732, and spot checks were made throughout the day with a Thermapen Mk3. Meat was officially in the grill at 6:30AM
.
I kept good records of the temps throughout the day, up until... the stall. Temps in the grill were almost perfect all day long, sitting at or near 225F; I was REALLY proud of myself, as it was 52F with 97% humidity in the morning, and hit 75F with 40% humidity and some gusts of 8-12MPH by late afternoon.
At about 6 hours, I hit 150F and it just stalled out. I thought, Cool, I'm ready for this. Got my Pitmaster subscription, got my Meathead book, I know all about the stall. Right? Right. Waited it out, and at almost 8 hours the temps started climbing to 160F. And then at about 10 hours the very slow climb stalled out AGAIN at 167F!
(that's at 6.25 hours, 151F, so no stall yet, no darkening happening)
Between 10 hours and this message being written at 12.25 hours, it's gone from 167F to 172F. I finally had to add briquettes at 10 hours, but just another 3-4 inches of snake (16?). At 12 hours, I added another 4-5" (maybe 20, I started just dumping them on because I was getting perturbed that I couldn't keep the temp up now, hovering around 205F). 12.25 hours in, I'm hovering around 250F (so I'll try to tweak that back down, but not too much). I "swept" the ash out with the arm under the kettle (very very slowly, almost no dust raised) to make certain I didn't have an air blockage. I've had to use three binder clips on the lid all day today, as I noticed smoke early on coming from all over the lid. Clips did the trick.
I just saw the temp tick up to 174F, so MAYBE I've finally powered through the second stall. On my way up to 200F, am I likely to see another?
Hopefully putting these small shots in the message will allow one to click on them and get larger images; I've never done this, so if it doesn't work that way, just ask and I'll post larger shots if needed.
Greetings from beautiful (today) West Michigan!
Wifey wasn't happy I used this as an excuse to skip church today... Fired up a little less than a half chimney of Kingsford blue (new bag last week), and set up my Weber 22" kettle for the 'snake' method, with two trails on the bottom and TWO trails on the top (I can't hit 225F for the life of me without that additional line of briquettes). Grabbed five chunks (fist-sized) of applewood and laid them out for the first three hours. I then added a big drip pan in the middle, with a small amount of hot water, and a smaller pan up top for humidity for the first three hours of smoking. Dumped on the hot coals, scrubbed down the grate and warmed it all up.
Took the butt out of the fridge at 39F, and put MMD on it without any additional water (it was pretty damp from the salting). Sat it for about 10 minutes, then onto the grill at about 235F. I waited about 15-20 minutes to let the temps in the grill stabilize before tweaking the vents to bring it to 225F. Temps were tested with an ET-732, and spot checks were made throughout the day with a Thermapen Mk3. Meat was officially in the grill at 6:30AM
.
I kept good records of the temps throughout the day, up until... the stall. Temps in the grill were almost perfect all day long, sitting at or near 225F; I was REALLY proud of myself, as it was 52F with 97% humidity in the morning, and hit 75F with 40% humidity and some gusts of 8-12MPH by late afternoon.
At about 6 hours, I hit 150F and it just stalled out. I thought, Cool, I'm ready for this. Got my Pitmaster subscription, got my Meathead book, I know all about the stall. Right? Right. Waited it out, and at almost 8 hours the temps started climbing to 160F. And then at about 10 hours the very slow climb stalled out AGAIN at 167F!
(that's at 6.25 hours, 151F, so no stall yet, no darkening happening)
Between 10 hours and this message being written at 12.25 hours, it's gone from 167F to 172F. I finally had to add briquettes at 10 hours, but just another 3-4 inches of snake (16?). At 12 hours, I added another 4-5" (maybe 20, I started just dumping them on because I was getting perturbed that I couldn't keep the temp up now, hovering around 205F). 12.25 hours in, I'm hovering around 250F (so I'll try to tweak that back down, but not too much). I "swept" the ash out with the arm under the kettle (very very slowly, almost no dust raised) to make certain I didn't have an air blockage. I've had to use three binder clips on the lid all day today, as I noticed smoke early on coming from all over the lid. Clips did the trick.
I just saw the temp tick up to 174F, so MAYBE I've finally powered through the second stall. On my way up to 200F, am I likely to see another?
Hopefully putting these small shots in the message will allow one to click on them and get larger images; I've never done this, so if it doesn't work that way, just ask and I'll post larger shots if needed.
Greetings from beautiful (today) West Michigan!
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