Holding a pork butt

I'm doing a 5 lb pork butt on the WSM for a Christmas potluck. I was wondering how long you can hold a pork butt wrapped in foil, inside a cooler for? The potluck is during the week and I'm thinking about starting the butt when I get home from work around 630. I figure it'll be done in the middle of the night so I was wondering how long a butt would keep for in the cooler...any help is greatly appreciated!

Derek,double,or even triple,heavy duty foil the butt. Put it in the cooler and fill all the voids with towels. It should hold for 5-6 hours.

A 5lb butt should take about 10 hours so, starting at 6:30pm, it should finish about 4:30am.

You might want to start it later so it finishes closer to your normal wake up time. Not only will this let you get a more normal sleep but it will extend hold time by not holding too early.

As Phil noted, wrapped well, it should hold at least 5 hours and still be a bit too hot to pull bare-handed.

Using a quality cooler preheated w/ hot water and filling the voids with newspaper will keep four or more pork butts hot for over seven hours.

Just one little five pounder? Not nearly as long. I'd add some other preheated items to the cooler to keep it hot...like a wrapped bread basket stone, for instance.

Derek, Good info above. What I generally do if I have room in the WSM, heat one or two fire bricks on the lower grate for a couple hrs or the entire cook if you want. Wrap the bricks in foil and put in the cooler either before the meat or at least with the meat. The extra warmth will add to your hold time. Probably don't want the meat touching the bricks tho as that may increase the cook time as well.

Mark

I think I'm gonna go with the brick idea since I can easily get them for free! I liked the bread stone idea too, but I don't own one. I know it's just a little guy, but there aren't a ton of people at my work and everyone is bringing some sort of dish/side to the party. Thanks for the help gentlemen! Still kind of new to smoking so I'm sure I'll be back for more sound advice

Derek, Sound advice is exactly what these guy's give ya. I bought my 18.5 WSM about a year ago. These folk's have never given me bad advice, so take heed do what they recommend, pay attention to detail,and you'll produce quality results.

I just read on another forum another good idea for holding just a little pork. The poster said you could add thermal mass with a couple of two liter soda bottles filled with scalding hot water.

Thanks for everyone's advice! This was the first pork butt I've done on the WSM and it turned out ok. I found that the holding wasn't really a huge issue b/c I just put it on a little later than I originally planned.

However, I wasn't really happy w/ the results of the smoke. I found that there were 2 things I wasn't really happy with. First off, I had a decent smoke ring, but not a lot of smoke flavor (I used 2 fist sized chunks of Hickory and 4 slightly smaller chunks of Apple). I let my rub sit on there for about a day and a half before smoking. I've heard that if you let the rub sit on too long it can hinder smoke penetration....anyone have thoughts on this? The second problem I had was the fact that the butt basically had no bark on it and I'm not sure why. Could it be from too much water in the pan? I think that not having any bark was the worse of the two issues. Any ideas???

Derek, congrats on your 1st Butt. As far as the bark not being there, Was there no bark at all, or was it soft. Did you foil during the smoke? Could be the amount of rub or lack there of. If you foiled the bark probably got saturated and sometimes you need to firm it up out of foil, but ... let us know how you cooked it. As far as smoke penetration, if you have a good ring I would guess that the smoke did penetrate or at least caused a chemical reaction to cause the ring. Check smoke flavor the day after if you have any left over. Did you like the taste and texture of the meat? Any pics?

Mark

As far as my cooking method, I didn't foil at all. Basically I got the WSM up to temp (steady 225) using the Minion method and put the butt on (fat side up) at about 8pm. I flipped the butt over around 1am w/ the temp holding steady at 225. I stirred the coals a little and went to bed. I got up at 5am and checked the butt. It didn't seem like it was quite done so I left it on for another hour. I took it off just after 6am then I foiled it and put it in a cooler w/ warm towels. Pulled it around 715 before I left for work. The taste was good, but I would have liked it to be a little smokier. Everyone at the pot luck raved about it (there wasn't a single shred of meat to take home), but I feel like it could/should have been even better.

Also, there wasn't really any bark at all. It was almost like doing a pork butt in the oven, but w/ a slight smoke flavor. I felt like I used a ton of the rub and even added some before I threw her on. I used a rub recipe for Memphis Magic Dust, w/ a few modifications, that I found on another site that always tastes awesome on ribs.

I meant to take pics (I try to every time I smoke something for future reference), but I was so flipping tired that it completely slipped my mind! I'll make up for that this coming weekend as I plan to smoke a lot of meat for a New Years party.

Derek, I wonder where the rub went? You could try rubbing the meat with mustard before adding the rub, no flavor but it does help hold the rub. I will be waiting for more explanations from the masters here.

Mark