First butt semi-fail. 22 hr for 7lb butt. Feedback would be appreciated

[Smoldering Flea]

Thanks. Though I suspect this was over cooked before it even hit 190 based on the sample I tried 16 hours into the cook at 185

[LA Pork Butt]

I routinely cook10# Boston Butts on a Big Green Egg which typically take 12-14 hours unwrapped at 225. I cooked one Friday night which was midway through the stall after 12 hours, so I wrapped and it pushed through to 200 internal in three more hours. Keep in mind that the weight of the meat doesn’t determine cook time but thickness of meat does. I once cooked 40# with the Butts on two levels which took 22 hours on one load of charcoal. I think you just had a stubborn Butt.

[RonB]

As Donw said, we have all been there. It sounds like you wanted to reach 203°. That's not necessary. When the cook stretches out timewise, start probing for tenderness when it's somewhere around 190° The probe should go in with almost no resistance - like a knife in soft butter.

[Donw]

We have all been there. I personally like to cook butts around 275, and don’t even mind some short periods up into the lower 300’s. I experience less stall issues and it can save quite a bit of time. However, you do sometimes get ‘that’ piece of meat which just fights you. This past week I did 2 almost identical butts,even down to the weight, yet one took almost 2 hours more to get where I wanted it.

[Smoldering Flea]

Well this was frustrating...Have started trying low and slow cooking on a large BGE. ribs seemed fine so tried pork butt for the first time entirely in the egg (vs. finishing in oven after initial smoke).
quick summary: stable-ish pit temp, double stall which led to a 22 hour cook (after raising the temp at the end). Drier meat than I hoped.

Setup: large BGE, with deflector. fireboard fan originally set at 225. 6.7# pork butt. Recipe per MH. did not foil/wrap. did not rest.

detailed timeline:
12:00am lit egg
1:30am happy that temp seems stabilized around 225 for an hour. attach fan and put the pork in
8:00am get alarm re: drop in pit temp. opened egg, saw plenty of charcoal, everything else looked fine. closed lid and problem seemed to resolve itself (guessing maybe fire choked out and initial gust of air + fan helped restart)
First stall hits from ~6am-9am. no worries, i know what to expect.
this is where things start to get weird
5pm (~15 hours into the cook) pork seems enter second stall @ 185, temp actually starts dropping
5:40pm - food probe temp confirmed by manual temping. increase target temp to 235-240
7:00pm: meat still at 185, i tear off a small piece and it seems ready though the texture was a bit grainy. was wondering if maybe it needed to cook further. temperature seems to break stall and start increasing
1030pm: check on charcoal. noticed a lot of ash, raked it through then increased pit temp to 250.
11:50pm: butt pulled @ 203.

Bone came out easily. the meat was shreddable. it seemed slightly dry and had a tacky texture. the bark was beef jerky like in texture (not sure if this is what it is supposed to be). Sauce definitely helped though i would think good pulled pork shouldn't be this reliant on sauce.

What i think i learned (please chime in if you disagree):
Obviously a large part of me wants to blame the meat (HA) but in an attempt to try to take something away some learnings from this:
I believe any dryness / grainy texture was from cooking the meat too long
I wonder if 225 is too low a temperature (or certainly i should have been quicker to increase the temp once the meat entered the second stall). Even pre-cook i was surprised that you could target a tight 20 degree differential between pit temp and food temp in a reasonable timeframe
I should have been more willing to increase the temperatures to 250-275 when it hit the second stall.
I should have tested for doneness (bone wiggle) 15 hours even despite the 185 food temp.

Would appreciate any other insights. Thanks!




Zoomed in graph below. note pit temp on left axis, food temp on right axis