12.76 lbs Boneless Pork Butt on the 22.5" Weber Smokey Mountain Smoker

(Commentary written as the cook happens...)

And... we're off! Once again, the pork butt is on the smoker! 12.76 lbs (two pieces) cut in half for more bark and faster smoke time. Going to try to keep the temp around 225 to 250 range. Smoking on the 22.5" WSM this time with hickory and water in the pan.

I'll wrap at the stall and keep going until I get to around 202 degrees.

I'm using two rubs. The middle rack is using Kick Butt Rib Rub - Hickory and the top rack is using Kick Butt Rib Rub - Chipotle Honey (which is really hot in comparison to the Hickory rub!) I want to see what the difference is on each rub. And, I put the rub on the day before to let it soak into the meat.

The pork is Swift Premium, boneless from Costco.

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Three hours into the cook, the pork has stalled at 159 degrees, so I placed the two pork butts into separate foil pans and covered the pans in foil. A bit of water was also placed in each pan for moisture (didn't have any apple juice or anything else.)

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Four hours into the cook and the internal temp is starting to move again. It's now at 164 degrees. The stall seemed to last only one hour this time. It might stall again though. I also added some additional coals to bring the pit temp up as well.  I also unlocked the Cajun Bandit door so a little more air could get into the smoker. I wanted to raise the pit temp up. As of this writing, the pit temp is now at 275 degrees. I'll lock it down again soon.

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I let the pit temp rise to 300 degrees and then locked down the Cajun Bandit door.  Internal meat temp is now at 175 degrees.  The pit temp continued rising after the door was locked down and got as high as 306 degrees before heading back down.

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Five hours into the cook and the pit temp is at 269 degrees. The internal temp has hit 199 degrees! So I'm done! But I'll let it go to 202 degrees anyway to be sure it pulls nicely.

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Well, I thought I was done, but I'm not!! Using my Thermapen Mk IV, I was able to quickly determine that the middle grate meat was only at 183 degrees, but the top grate meat is done at 203 degrees. I swapped the position of the middle to the top and removed the top meat and it's resting. Here's a photo of the top grate pork butt...

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The middle grate pork that was moved to the top grate finished at 7 hour 15 minutes. It is shown below:

Well, I learned a couple of things with this cook. First, the middle grate doesn't cook nearly as quickly as the top grate. I've read this before, but now I know firsthand. 5 hours for the top grate meat, 7 hours 15 minutes for the middle grate meat and that's after moving it to the top after 5 hours.

Second, I learned that even if the rub is rather spicy if tasted before adding it to anything (straight out of the bottle), it is nowhere nearly as spicy after you cook with it. Between the two rubs I used on this cook, the Hickory was too mild and the Chipotle Honey wasn't as spicy as I thought. Between the two, I'd go with the Chipotle Honey for pulled pork.