Santa brought me a new CS009 for Christmas.
Set it up and seasoned it the other day but didn't have the time to cook till yesterday. Went with two 6.5lb pork butts as that cut seems to be relatively failsafe. Used CS RibRub for one and Alton Brown's Rub #9 (see pg 169 in "I'm Just Here for the Food") for the other. Refrigerated it for 24 hours.
Loaded the 009 with the meat and 6 oz of Hickory. Set it at 225* and let it go. I'm so glad I read this forum first as I would have otherwise been freaking out that the meat went from 168 down to 163 and stayed in that range for over 5 hours.
Pulled the AB #9 out at 21.5 hrs and the other an hour later, both at 192* internal. Wrapped both in foil and kitchen towels and put in cooler for an hour or two. Took a little longer than I was expecting but learned that I'll need to start early when cooking for others.
The CS RibRub one had a beautiful mahogany bark, pulled easily, was very moist and oh so flavorful. The AB #9 was also very moist, pulled easily and the meat was delicious, but the bark was quite a bit darker and seemed to lack any flavor at all. Thankfully it wasn't burned though. I think this may be because this rub is 50% brown sugar and it just cooked out all of it's flavor as well as the other spices mixed with the sugar over such a long period. Next time I think I'll try a rub with less sugar. I'll continue to use this rub though following AB's recipe for ribs in the oven as (at least to this point anyway) they are the best ribs I've had anywhere.
For sauces I tried Smokin' Okie's Pulled Pork Baste and Serving Sauce and his Virgin Mustard Sauce with slight modifications. Instead of the cayenne I used 2x the called for amount of our homemade pepper blend made from dried Harold's St. Barts (a Caribbean habanero), lemon drop peppers, datil sweet peppers and Thai Dragon Hybrid's. This mix is a bit hotter than straight cayenne but then we like it hot!! The serving sauce was to die for. Already I'm thinking of new ways to use it.
Neither the Mrs. nor I really like yellow mustard but I thought I'd try this one. She still didn't like it but I thought it was pretty good. I'll use it again.Anyway sorry for the long post but I did want to share my successes and thank everyone for the time and effort put into this site to make it successful. I look forward to being an active part of this community.
) Always nice to hear success stories. Sounds like you've got a good handle on Q. Have fun and come backk often