Along with many other items, I've smoked about a dozen butts in my 008 that I got as a gift last Xmas and I thought, for timing purposes, that I had a pretty good handle on the 160F-170F plateau issue. I'm not so sure any more.
Put a 7.5 boneless butt in the smoker yesterday at 6:45 A.M. and kept an hourly log. Set smoker temp was 225F. At 10:45 the internal temp was 158F. At 11:45 it was 172F, where it held, until it dropped, at 3:45 to 165F. It then hovered between 165F-167F until 6:45 when I pulled and put it in a 300F oven and brought it to 193F. Removed, foiled, toweled, put in a cooler and pulled about an hour later. All in all, it "plateaued" for 7 hours and probably would have been much longer had I not removed it from the smoker. With my prior butts, the plateau's been 2-3 hours. Has anybody ever seen a plateau this long? I know that "It's not done until it's done" but this seems a bit exceptional.
BTW - I only opened the door once to brush on some of Smokin's Pork Baste and to use an instant read thermometer to see if my probe was OK. It was. Also, the pork pulled OK but was a little drier than usual. After pulling, I moistened it with 3 cups of the pork baste, mixed in a couple of TBS of rub and it tasted great. Served it with an altered version of Smokin's Virgin Mustard Sauce and everybody loved it.
Original Post