Paul Dalbey
New member
Hello everyone. Long time (relatively) listener, first time caller here... so to speak. Please bare with me just a bit as I recall my first smoking experience yesterday in all the gory details.
I got my WSM 22 last week as a Father's Day gift and was excited all week to fire it up and make some killer pulled pork. I literally spent hours and HOURS researching everything from smoker operation to meat prep to rub recipes and everything else under the sun related to this first run.
I got my rub well mixed, prepped the pork butt the night before, just as I had read over and over to do, fired up the WSM via the Minion Method, got good heat and things were looking pretty good. The first coals were lit around 6:15 and at 6:45 am, the butt went down. And then it seemed to just not go right anymore.
FYI, I was using KBB with about 4 chunks of pecan to do the work. After removing the fat cap, false cap, and any other major chunks of fat, the pork butt weight in at just under 7 pounds (I think it was 6#, 13oz or something like that.)
The temp of my WSM seemed to take off even though I started trying to pull the vents back at about 200°. Even with all the vents fully closed and the water pan filled, my temps were pushing 300°. As a last resort, I nudged the top vent closed just a hair, maybe 10-20%, and was able to get my temps back down to around 250-275. (As a note, it was a rather warm and muggy morning with the WSM in direct sunlight and temps probably in the mid-80s around this time.)
I had a digital thermometer stuck in the hunk of meat from the beginning. It started at about 38° at 6:45 and by 11:15 or so, it was up to 150°. At this point, the temps start to stall. I had read this would happen and wasn't alarmed, but I thought most people reported this stall happened closer to 160°. I thought 150 was a bit low, but figured it was ok.
Around late afternoon, let's say around 5:00 or so, the butt had been on for over 10 hours and temps were still hovering around 160°. At this point, I started losing heat in the smoker, even though the vents were all wide open again. I opened the access to make sure the charcoal was still burning and not too ashy. They looked good but I get the WSM legs a little nudge just to knock off any ash that was still there and maybe reshuffle the deck a little bit. This helped a little bit, but I was still having trouble keeping the temps above 225°. (Note, I was going strickly by the dome thermometer, which I realize now might not be the best idea, but given the eternal stall, I figured it probably was giving me somewhat accurate info.)
Over the next several, I continued to lose heat and finally had to start throwing in my charcoal. I ended up going through an entire 19# bag of KBB and probably another 50 briquettes of a second bag. Checking the temp again at around 9:00 pm, the pork registered about 181-183°, meaning between 11:00 am and 9:00 pm, 10 hours, the temp had increased only 30 degrees.
By about 11:30 pm, I decided I had had enough and that I had apparently done something wrong. Though I knew 195° was the lower end of the target range, I had hoped to get the hog all the way up to 205° because I generally like my pulled pork just a little drier. I finally took the pork off the smoker after 16 hours and threw it in the oven to finish. About a half hour later, it got up to my desired temperature, so I removed it, placed it in an aluminum pan, and covered it with foil for about 45 minutes. I was able to pull it fairly easily, but the bark seemed over done/tough and it was a bit excessively dry, probably because I set my oven too high at 350°. (Then again, it was about 1:00 in the morning and I was just ****ed off so maybe that clouded my judgement.)
So where did I go wrong? I got the butt on just a little later than I had anticipated. Given a 7-pound meat, I was going by the 1:30-2:00 per pound rule of thumb and thinking it would probably need about 12 hours to all work out. I had intended to get it on around 6:00 am, finish at 6:00 pm, let it rest, and be ready to eat around 7:30. It obviously didn't happen, and I was so disappointed by my first experience. I know this is a great smoker and it had to have been operator error. I just don't know what.
Here's what I'm thinking I may have done wrong:
- Pork butt straight from fridge to smoker. As I said, it was about 38° when it went down. Should I have let it sit out for an hour or so before putting it on?
- Perhaps I should have thrown more charcoal in the tank sooner? I was shocked I burned through a 19# bag from Sam's in about 12 hours. I didn't realize it would be THAT fuel hungry. Given that bags at most stores are only 15#, I thought for SURE 19# would set me right for a while
- I completely forgot to flip or rotate the pork while it was on the smoker. I had intended to do this around 11:00 or noon, but just totally forgot. I'm guessing that probably contributed to some of the bark being quite overdone?
- I know the pork butt will hit the stall around 160°, but can it happen as low as 150°? And does it usually stall for SO long that it takes 10 hours to go from 150° to 180°?
What else? At this point, I'm like a sponge and hoping to absorb as much knowledge from this group as possible. Having spent many, many hours on here already, I've learned so much just from general posts.
I got my WSM 22 last week as a Father's Day gift and was excited all week to fire it up and make some killer pulled pork. I literally spent hours and HOURS researching everything from smoker operation to meat prep to rub recipes and everything else under the sun related to this first run.
I got my rub well mixed, prepped the pork butt the night before, just as I had read over and over to do, fired up the WSM via the Minion Method, got good heat and things were looking pretty good. The first coals were lit around 6:15 and at 6:45 am, the butt went down. And then it seemed to just not go right anymore.
FYI, I was using KBB with about 4 chunks of pecan to do the work. After removing the fat cap, false cap, and any other major chunks of fat, the pork butt weight in at just under 7 pounds (I think it was 6#, 13oz or something like that.)
The temp of my WSM seemed to take off even though I started trying to pull the vents back at about 200°. Even with all the vents fully closed and the water pan filled, my temps were pushing 300°. As a last resort, I nudged the top vent closed just a hair, maybe 10-20%, and was able to get my temps back down to around 250-275. (As a note, it was a rather warm and muggy morning with the WSM in direct sunlight and temps probably in the mid-80s around this time.)
I had a digital thermometer stuck in the hunk of meat from the beginning. It started at about 38° at 6:45 and by 11:15 or so, it was up to 150°. At this point, the temps start to stall. I had read this would happen and wasn't alarmed, but I thought most people reported this stall happened closer to 160°. I thought 150 was a bit low, but figured it was ok.
Around late afternoon, let's say around 5:00 or so, the butt had been on for over 10 hours and temps were still hovering around 160°. At this point, I started losing heat in the smoker, even though the vents were all wide open again. I opened the access to make sure the charcoal was still burning and not too ashy. They looked good but I get the WSM legs a little nudge just to knock off any ash that was still there and maybe reshuffle the deck a little bit. This helped a little bit, but I was still having trouble keeping the temps above 225°. (Note, I was going strickly by the dome thermometer, which I realize now might not be the best idea, but given the eternal stall, I figured it probably was giving me somewhat accurate info.)
Over the next several, I continued to lose heat and finally had to start throwing in my charcoal. I ended up going through an entire 19# bag of KBB and probably another 50 briquettes of a second bag. Checking the temp again at around 9:00 pm, the pork registered about 181-183°, meaning between 11:00 am and 9:00 pm, 10 hours, the temp had increased only 30 degrees.
By about 11:30 pm, I decided I had had enough and that I had apparently done something wrong. Though I knew 195° was the lower end of the target range, I had hoped to get the hog all the way up to 205° because I generally like my pulled pork just a little drier. I finally took the pork off the smoker after 16 hours and threw it in the oven to finish. About a half hour later, it got up to my desired temperature, so I removed it, placed it in an aluminum pan, and covered it with foil for about 45 minutes. I was able to pull it fairly easily, but the bark seemed over done/tough and it was a bit excessively dry, probably because I set my oven too high at 350°. (Then again, it was about 1:00 in the morning and I was just ****ed off so maybe that clouded my judgement.)
So where did I go wrong? I got the butt on just a little later than I had anticipated. Given a 7-pound meat, I was going by the 1:30-2:00 per pound rule of thumb and thinking it would probably need about 12 hours to all work out. I had intended to get it on around 6:00 am, finish at 6:00 pm, let it rest, and be ready to eat around 7:30. It obviously didn't happen, and I was so disappointed by my first experience. I know this is a great smoker and it had to have been operator error. I just don't know what.
Here's what I'm thinking I may have done wrong:
- Pork butt straight from fridge to smoker. As I said, it was about 38° when it went down. Should I have let it sit out for an hour or so before putting it on?
- Perhaps I should have thrown more charcoal in the tank sooner? I was shocked I burned through a 19# bag from Sam's in about 12 hours. I didn't realize it would be THAT fuel hungry. Given that bags at most stores are only 15#, I thought for SURE 19# would set me right for a while
- I completely forgot to flip or rotate the pork while it was on the smoker. I had intended to do this around 11:00 or noon, but just totally forgot. I'm guessing that probably contributed to some of the bark being quite overdone?
- I know the pork butt will hit the stall around 160°, but can it happen as low as 150°? And does it usually stall for SO long that it takes 10 hours to go from 150° to 180°?
What else? At this point, I'm like a sponge and hoping to absorb as much knowledge from this group as possible. Having spent many, many hours on here already, I've learned so much just from general posts.