7 lb Pork Butt on the 18.5" Weber Smokey Mountain

Once again, I'm smoking a pork butt!  This time it is a 7 lb butt (8.16 lbs, but I trimmed off most of the fat cap) on the 18.5" WSM.  I am using Cherry Wood for the smoke this time and as usual, I cut the butt in half to speed up the cooking time.  The rubs are a combination of Kick Butt Rib Rub - Hickory and Famous Dave's Rib Rub along with a touch of cayenne pepper and paprika.  Water is in the water pan and a "pizza pan" with foil is on top of it to aid in the clean up later.

I'm smoking the meat at around 265 degrees on average. The temp outdoors today is 40 degrees and very little wind.  I expect it should take around 6-7 hours like my last cook, but both sections of the cut butt are on the top grate.  I'm monitoring with my ThermoWorks Smoke thermometers again with a probe in each of the cut sections and a probe monitoring the pit temp.  I'll continue until the meat stalls and then will place them into a foil pan and cover the top of the pan with an aluminum pan cover.  Apple juice will be added to the pan very little to keep the humidity in there.  I'll also spritz every hour until the time to wrap.
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One hour into the cook:

Two hours into the cook:

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The meat has stalled at 153 degrees.  It's been at this temp for about 1/2 hour and it's now at 3 hours into the cook, so I'm going to put the meat in an aluminum pan and cover it with an aluminum top as well.  I'll put some apple juice into the pan to keep the meat moist as it plows through the stall and finishes the cook.

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I had to go out with my wife for about an hour, so I couldn't continue monitoring the cook.  When I got back, my ThermoWorks Smoke receiver was in the alarm mode showing that my pit temp had dropped to 205 degrees!  The meat temps had also dropped as they were around 185 degrees when I left, but it was now showing 172 degrees.  I couldn't tell if the meat had reached the desired 197 degrees and then started dropping due to the pit temp dropping or if it never even reached it.  This is where having the Gateway option for the Smoke thermometers would have come in handy!

Regardless, I decided I'd just stop the cook since I was getting hungry anyway.  Turns out the meat wasn't at the point of having the collagen and connective tissues ready for a pull, so the meat was somewhat harder to pull.  Regardless, the taste was really great and the texture was actually quite good.  I'm actually ok with it not pulling totally apart.  It felt like a really soft steak in texture rather than pulled pork, but that made it kind of unique.  I also think I like having a bit of heat in the rubs by adding the cayenne pepper.  Here's what the final product looked like before the pull.  Total cook time was 6 hours, 20 mins.