HELP - Pork Butt Cook Time Question

Well,I'm no expert-but I have cooked with a bunch.

Opening the door all the time is not good,but occasionally we have to learn what we are doing-by opening the door.Hopefully you have an instaread therm that can check temps in several spots in the meat?

I trust you used a calibrated therm to check the actual cooking temp at the spot the meat is setting?

You don't mention what time you are serving,so you might be fine? Yes, that is a slow move out of the plateau ,but it usually moves quickly when it starts.Folks usually put the probe in the smallest butt and the largest butt closest to the heat element.

After you open the door, see what is happening , then adjust .If you are behind schedule-kick it up to 250º.Heat can be your friend when meeting your schedule.

Try to finish early.If you foil and hot box those 30 lbs of butts properly,they will still be too hot to handle after six hrs.

Hope this helps a little.

Welcome to the family B-dog.

I have had butts take an hour and fifteen to two hours and fifteen minutes per pound to cook.
I have yet ciphered out a way to figure out which butts will stall forever and which ones will coast on to the finish line

When Tom says he’s no expert he is being extremely modest. He is right on with his advice because he speaks only from experience.

If all the butts are about the same, but I have an odd number I put the odd one on the bottom with the fat side down and the rest with the fat side up. I put the temp probe in one of the butts on the second shelf and use a Maverick 737 as a check in some of the other butts.

When the AmeriQue probe says it is at temp I open the door and probe the butts. If the temp probe slides into each butt about what it should feel like sliding into warm butter I pull them out, double wrap them in Foil with a little apple juice, wrap them in a Towel, and put them in a Cooler (FTC). They will keep hot for 8 hours or longer. If I have a meal time to plan on I figure on at least two hours per pound. That way if they’re done early there’s no pressure or if they hit a long stall they’re still done about on time.

I would strongly suggest you resist the uncontrollable need to open the door for a look see until the probe tells you your butt has hit temperature

Take a look at Smokin- Okie's 101s it's a really good place to start.

You're gonna like the way you smoke

Yesterday I put 60 pounds in my SM150 at 2pm. Most of the 8 butts didn't reach 195 until 6:00am this morning. 16 hours. I start mine at 250 until they reach about 170. Then I cranked it down to 225. The smoker never reached 250 because of all that meat. But I figured the higher start temp would help.

Watching BBq pitmasters last week, the one that Butcher BBq won...they had 10 hours to do a butt. They had it done in 7 hours. With higher start temps and foiling 3/4 of the way through. Something to that I think!!

I think what padre is saying is use your cooker as your tool,not you being the tool for the cooker.

Here on the forum,we tend to focus our week's energy on "a" hunk of meat.

Think in terms of guys that are doing a few cases,four or five days a week.

Are all the temps/times what they would always choose? probably not,but they adjust to the schedule.

There is one "famous" comp cook/TV judge/class instructor that doesn't get to his comp site,the many times we cook against him,until after 6 AM and the first turnins start at 11 AM.

The cooker running at 350º and the butts foiled in Al pans,he can finish cooking in four hrs

He is the foremost advocate of making the cooker work for him.