Pulled pork (90 lbs) first time larger amount

[scheitholz]

Hello everyone,

in a Little over two weeks from now we need to supply about 350 servings of pulled pork during a village fair.
Since the popular boston-butt-cut is hard to come by in Germany (at least for a reasonable buck and in larger quantities), I chose deboned pork-neck (av. 5-6 lbs/piece) instead.
On the cooker-front we have a bullet-smoker, and a Napoleon Rogue. Since we won´t be able to cook everything on time, I plan on Smoking the most part the Weekend before, vacuseal in portions, freeze, and then reheat in a large water-tub (powered by a Sous-vide-heater) on site.

My Barrel-cooker has two Levels with 50cm grates each (~19 in) and I hope to be able to pack 2-3 hunks on each grate during each cook. That´ll be 30-35 lbs per cook. The rogue might handle 2-3 pieces on the indirect side as well.
I plan on Smoking the cuts for about 6hrs and finishing them wrapped in a regular indoor-oven to free up Smoking space.

I now pretty well how my cooker behaves during a normal cook of a standard boston-butt or brisket, using the fuse-arrangement for coals, I´ve had great results.
My question is this:

Would you think it feasable to load up a fairly small cooker like mine with large portions? Do you have any experience on how much the cooking time is prolonged?

Comments are much appreciated

Happy cooking and Kind regards,
scheitholz

[HorseDoctor]

OK, I haven't done it but I would expect that loading your cooker up like that would take longer to get to what you want before wrapping and moving to oven. Either plan for the extra time or up your cooking temp some (or both) to adjust for the mass of cold meat you are starting with. Good luck & enjoy!

[RonB]

I haven't done a packed smoker either, but that won't stop me from offering my $0.02 worth. The smoker is to add smoke flavor to the meat. So 4 to 6 hours with smoke should give you that smoky flavor. After that, it doesn't matter where you cook it.

As far as loading the smoker heavily, just bump the temp up. I suggest 275* to 300* for a target range - the pork can take it.

[Nate]

Curious since I haven't done it.... how does pork neck compare to shoulder?

[ecowper]

I have cooked 30-60 lbs of pork shoulder. On my Hasty-Bake I can do 4 pork shoulders at a time. Which is about 30 lbs. So, I’m either doing one or two batches. When doing the 60 lbs range, I get four pork butts on, let them go about 6 hours for smoke and bark, then finish in the oven while I’m cooking the next 4 on the smoker. I run the grill temp at 275F rather than 225F, as well.

I make sure the pork butts have enough space between them for airflow and to build bark, but no more than that. Maybe 2-3 cm (1 inch). It looks like this