24 lb Turkey on the 22.5" Weber Smokey Mountain

I am cooking another turkey!  This one is 24 lbs and will be cooked on the 22.5" WSM.

This time I put minimal amount of rub on the turkey (Pork Barrel BBQ) and brined the turkey overnight with less salt.  I could not get one of the wings to tuck backwards like I usually do and you can see it hanging out in the photo.  The drumsticks were tied back with cooking twine.  I wiped on some vegetable oil on the turkey so that the skin will brown nicely.

I am cooking the turkey without wood today so it's just charcoal, no smoke.  The water pan is in the smoker with a foiled pizza pan sitting in the pan, but no water is added.  This allows the smoker to get a high pit temperature of 345 degrees.  I am monitoring with 3 probes in the turkey (one in the leg - later moved to the thigh and one in each breast) and 1 pit temperature probe.  Two ThermoWorks Smoke thermometers are doing the monitoring.

I'm not going to do much at all to the turkey... just let it run in the smoker! I'll cook until the two breasts reach at least 165 degrees internal temp, but may remove it from the smoker at 160 degrees since the turkey will likely carry over and continue to cook to 165 even after removing it. I will probably spray the skin with Apple juice every hour however.

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One hour into the cook:

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Two hours into the cook and the pit temp has dropped to 324 degrees.

The photo below is three hours into the cook.  I added more charcoal hoping to raise the pit temp which is now at 267 degrees.  (15 minutes later after adding the extra briquets... the temp is now risen to 300 degrees.)

4 hours and the internal breast temperatures are at 155 degrees and 162 degrees.  The one breast seems to be constantly lagging behind the other.  The thigh temp is only at 154 degrees, which is surprising to me.  Typically, they say you need the thigh temp up in the 180 degree area to be considered "done".  I'm fearful that letting the turkey sit that long to get it up to 180 degrees will dry out the breast of this turkey!  So, I think I am just going to let the breast get to 170 degrees max and call it a day regardless of where the thigh temp is at.  I'm going to move the probe on the thigh to the other thigh to see where that is at.  I'll also use my ThermoWorks Thermapen Mk IV to spot check temps in other areas.

The photo below is 4 hours into the cook:

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The finished product after 5 hours of cooking: