Well, I started my cook at 6:00 AM today, and followed Chris’s advice. It went pretty well! I found that it was more difficult to regulate the temperature without the water, but it did allow the WSM to run at the required temp. It actually tended to want to run hot, spiking up to 270 on occasion, requiring me to close the dampers almost completely, including the top one a bit, and that brought it down. The huge spikes in temperature after I had the lid off, due to the increased oxygen I expect, occurred again, but I found that if I just keep the smoker covered and the dampers sufficiently closed, it goes back down over time. I think that last time, I panicked and took the lid off to try to “fix“ things, which just made things worse, adding still more oxygen. I am finding that a philosophy of “don’t sweat it” and putting up with some temp inconsistency tends to make the smoking experience much more enjoyable without affecting the end product too much.
From what I have read, pork butts should be wrapped after they reach 165°, but since my four butts were only at around 157° after six hours, I opted to wrap them
at that time so they would not absorb too much smoke, then they went into the oven where they will still be for a few more hours. Did I do the right thing?
What I would like to try this time is to let the butts sit for an hour after finishing so they can absorb the juice from the foil pans I have each of them in. Then I thought I would drain the pans into a bowl, spoon off the grease, then add the juice back in to mix when the pork is pulled. In my experience, there is a lot of flavor in the juice due to it being in contact with the spices, so I don’t want to lose that.
Thanks for the tips!