overcooked my butt

First go on my new 22.5. I read it would take anywhere from 1.5 to 2 hrs per lb to cook butts, so I put on 2 butts (boneless) last night at midnight - both roughly 7.5 lbs. I figured it would take at least 11 hrs and probably more since there were two. The temp at the lid thermometer never got above 250... most of the time was around 240. At 10am I finally inserted meat thermometers... one butt at 200F and the other butt at 205F. ****! I wrapped them in foil and shoved in a cooler for later, but not until getting another thermometer and double checking as that seemed too fast.

1) how much difference will there be in the meat since I pulled it off on the long end of recommended temp for butts?

2) Did I read the time estimates wrong? Should a boneless butt be 1 hr to 1.5 hr per pound? I don't know for sure when they hit 190-195, but this was only a 10 hr cook to hit 205...

Ken, were the butts probe tender when you pulled them off? Once common mistake for folks new to cooking bbq is getting too caught up on temperature readings. Learn to use temps as a guide. Meat is done when it's done. When butts are fully cooked and ready to be taken off the temp probe you are using should slide into the meat like it's going into a stick of room temperature butter. There should be very little resistance when sliding in.

1) Most will agree on here that 200-205 is a common guideline for when they are finished, although you are still going to want to check for tenderness prior to pulling. They should be fine. The fat content in butts is so high that unless grossly overcooked, it's very hard to dry them out. Even when I first started cooking these on my WSM, no matter how hard I tried to mess one up (and I tried plenty hard), I've never had one turn out bad. They are probably the most forgiving cut of meat to cook.

2) Depending on the butts, 1.5 per lb is a fairly good guide. Some will cook a little quicker, some a little longer. Most of the ones I cook these days are 9.5 lbs or larger, and they will go close to 15-18 hrs depending on what kind of lid temp I am cooking at, and what time frame I am looking to get them finished by. Most of the time I'll cook them up towards 275-290 temp range.

I have the older WSM without a built in lid temp so I just a candy thermometer in the exhaust vent. From so many posts on here lately about different temp readings between the new built in therm and therms in the exhaust vent, I'd say the built in therm is reading a little bit lower than the conventional therm through the exhaust vent.

Regardless, pick a point to measure temp (like your lid therm), stick with it, and go from there. Over the course of the cooks that you do, you will begin to get a feel for how hot, how long, etc that your meat will need to cook.

Also, just because you are doing two butts instead of one, it's not going to lengthen the cook time. I.E. I cook one 10 lb butt in the same time it takes to cook 4 10 lb butts in my 18.5 cooker.

I'd be hard pressed to say they don't turn out great.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Ken Grove:
one butt at 200F and the other butt at 205F. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
They'll be fine...probably the best pulled pork you've ever had.

Like Mitch said, they're done when they're done. Mine usually are ready anywhere between 190 and 210 degrees.

Let us know how they turn out.

Mitch is right on. The one thing I'd add is if you get some kind of probe thermometer it's interesting to watch because the meat will sit in the 180s for @#$%#$% ever, with the energy going into chemical reactions instead of raising the temperature, until it finally breaks free. That's where that 190 number you see sometimes comes from - it doesn't mean it's *done* - it means it's out of that @#$%#$ plateau and until that point there's no reason to even bother checking for doneness.

Thanks both for the comments and advice. It was definitely tender inserting the probe... I'll know in a few hours how well it worked.

Lesson learned - Next time I'm putting the probe in much earlier just in case.

Everything worked great. I thought it might be very slightly dry, but everyone else who ate the pulled pork thought it was amazing. I was probably overly sensitive because I overcooked it versus my expectations. Because the butt finished much, much earlier than I expected (10am instead of 1 pm), it also had to sit around for many hours in a cooler where it luckily never dropped below 140 until I finally pulled it out to pull it.

So the good news is my wife told me that mine was the finest butt she ever had... but I guess post that story on another forum.

It's always good news when your wife loves your butt.

Haha, I started 4 butts at midnight on Saturday and expected them to be done in 10 hours. They weren't, they decided they needed the full 16 hours to finish.

The WSM did great, I ran 14 hours on one load of charcoal!

I've pulled pork from 192-205 and every one has been excellent.