first time butt / shoulder smoker....help...got an 18lb!!!

I think everybody over smokes the food at first with there new CS. When I do a butt I like to rub some mustard and then the dry rub it helps to make it stick better and If I have the time put in the frig. over night.
They say around 1 1/2 hours per pound something like that.Anyway I put the butt on that night and just let it cook over night and its ready to pull in the morning.
Just remeber 190 to 195 for pulled.Get you a Polder or one like it so you know the temp. of your meat.

mornin',jbone.

First I'd recommend the butt/shoulder archives and Smokin's 101 that he has worked diligently to provide for us.

I don't cook a lot of shoulders,but I'll give my $0.02 worth till some MIM guys jump in.They'll probably say don't skin it,but they will inject heavily.

You don't have to skin it at all,but you can trim the skin and some of the fat down leaving about a 3 to 4 in. sock on the shank.

This will allow you to get a heavy dry rub on it for several hours and a little better smoke.

You can use one of the injections posted around here for flavor,if you like.

I like hickory and apple for pork and you might want to add a little more,several hours into the cooking.

I'd cook around 225� to an internal of about 190�-195�, or when it feels done to your liking.If you foil and cooler that big chunk,it will rise another 8-10�.

You can figure at least 14 hrs.,although I don't rely much on the time.

If you want to slice or chop,you might want to pull it down around 185�.

Hope this helps a little.

Jbone,

Got question about Shoulder. In all the posts we have in the forum, very, very few are about shoulder's.

I'd like to smoke more shoulder's here, but they're almost impossible to find.

Tom's got some great comments. The biggest is usually whether to leave the skin on or off. If you leave the skin on, it's hard to do a goodd rub. Take the skin off and apply a rub if you want to. Both methods work. But I like Tom's idea.

An 18lb butt will NOT be finished very fast. Definitely plan on a long smoke.

I'd for a 250 temp and plan on at least an hour per pound. Just remember if it's done a couple of hours early, you can take it out of the smoker, double wrap it and put it in a holding cooler or something.

As for wood. My suggestion is to use just 2 oz initially, and then after the smoke stops, 2 more. Subtle smoke for me works better than trying to over-load something too fast. After all, the smoke will not penetrate very far, very fast and the theory is that at 140 is stops...well, the bark will continue to absord the smoke.

Do you have a digital camera? take some photos and email them to me.