This was the first smoke of the 2021 season. Outside temperature today was around 45 degrees for a high. I used the 18.5" Weber Smokey Mountain for this cook and put in two pork butts cut in half (my traditional way) to speed up the cook.
The pit temp stayed fairly consistent throughout the cook at around 260 degrees. I put one butt on the middle rack and the other on the top. Water was in the water pan.
After about 3 hours, I wrapped the meats in aluminum pans and foil with some water in the pan for moisture. Surprisingly, the middle grate meat finished first and hit 205 degrees internal temperature after only 5.5 hours. It pulled like butter!
The top grate meat wasn't as lucky. It took 7.5 hours but only hit 187 degrees internal temperature before I stopped the cook. The charcoals were burning out and dropped to under the 185 degree range and I decided not to add more charcoal to continue it. This one did not pull as well and I expected that. Perhaps if I was willing to add more charcoal to continue to the 205 range, it might have been ok, but somehow, I don't think it would have been as soft as the first one.
Each piece of meat is different and while the middle grate usually finishes last, this time, it finished first and was the better of the two pork butts. I guess it's hard to gauge where your cook will go since each piece of meat will vary. Both were purchased on sale at $0.99 per pound, but each had about 1 lb of fat cap which I cut off. These were Bone-in on both butts. I used Kick Butt Rib Rub - Chipotle Honey rub as usual.
It was good to get back out there to smoke some meat after a long winter break.
