My first Boston Butt cook


 
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Dan Krause

TVWBB Fan
I have started prepping my first Boston Butt cook. I have trimmed a lot of the fat from top of the butts and I have rubbed them with Meathead's Memphis Dust (recipe from Memphis Dust). Here is what I have so far:
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I am going to get the smoker going at 5 pm using the Minion method with Apple and Pecan wood chunks. DigiQ DX set up for ramp mode on with pit temp set for 225 and the meat temp st at 190. Meat on at about 6 pm. Hope to pull it off at about 8 am. Wrap the meat in foil and ready for pulling by 2 pm. I got 12 racks of spares going on first thing in the morning. Got a couple of different sauces made up and ready to go.

Wish me luck and let me know if I am missing anything.
 
Originally posted by Albert Adato:
Hey Dan, what is the address again?
I'll be leaving around 6pm tonight and should be there in time for dinner.
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Meet you there. There's not much east of the Mississippi I can't get to inside of 14 hours.
 
One thing I forgot to mention, Chris at Cajun Bandit Rocks. I ordered my DigiQ and WSM pimp kit last Sunday. My order was in the mail by Monday morning and on my door step by Wednesday. It was beautifully packaged. There was a small mix up and the adapter for WSM was not in the box. I shot him an message and he called me in less than an hour. Figured out the problem and then next day air shipped the piece I needed so I could do this monster cook this weekend. I cannot say enough good things about Chris and his customer service. That and the DigQ is working like a champ.
 
Meat temp was reading 188 at about 8:15 am this morning. Being impatient, I finally opened the lid to have a look, and this is what I found:

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I think I probably could pull it off the smoker right now, but I am going to wait till the meat temp hits 190. It smells wonderful, almost like bacon. So far very happy with this cook. I am glad I had the DigiQ, didn't have to add fuel once or adjust any dampers through the entire night. I checked in on the WSM 4 times through the night, but I bet I could have slept through the whole night and been fine.
 
Man that looks tasty, get back out there with a fork and try some of that bark! You deserve it! Glad you had a good experiance on your first go
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It is supposed to lower the pit temp to close to what the meat temp is near the end. Since this was first time I have used the DigiQ, I did not have my damper set correctly. There was enough natural draft through the fan to keep pit temps elevated. The highest I saw was 243, but once I adjusted the damper it dropped to 220. I was a little tentative with my adjustments because I was afraid I would completely smother my fire.

On a very surprising note, after pulling the butt, I checked my coal load to set up for cooking 12 racks of St. Louis Spare ribs. I was shocked to at the amount charcoal left in the ring. I attribute this too 3 things:

1. I got the bigger charcoal ring from Cajun Bandit.

2. The use of the DigiQ.

3. I didn't use water in the water pan for the first time. Instead I use a 16" terra cotta saucer and sand. I put about 2" of sand in the bottom of the foiled lined water pan. Wrapped that in foil, wrapped the saucer in foil, and put it on top of the sand in the water pan.

I now have the Boston Butt double wrapped in foil in an empty cooler. I plan on pulling the pork at about 1 pm today. Now that the smoker was empty, I now had room to load it up like this:

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Well I finally shredded all 4 butts. Overall I am very pleased with the results. I won't win any competitions with it but my guests will be pleased. I did learn one very important lesson. Just because you check the temp in the 2 biggest butts doesn't mean the smaller ones are at the same temp; especially if they were on a lower rack in a cooler part of the cooker. The smaller butts were definitely done and fork tender but the butts up top were a little more juicy and had a more melt in your mouth aspect. Here is a pic of the results:
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My wife loves the bark of pulled pork and is always willing to help pull the pork to get her fingers on those extra crispy pieces. Here is what she thought of the pulled pork:

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@Eric: I work down in Newport, so I stopped off in Southgate at Ray's Prime Food. Very friendly staff. I put in an order for 2 cryovac packs with 2 bone-in butts, came out to about 33 pounds of meat. Going rate was $1.69/pound. They also had brisket flats on hand and could order whole packers.
 
Dan,
It's official, you can drop the " A beginner" from your signature line cuz we ain't buy-en it.
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