Question on multiple butts


 
W

Will J

New member
First time smoking multiple butts. Feeding about 30 of my wife's family at about seven tomorrow evening.

I know the rule of thumb of about an hour and a half a pound. Does that refer to individual butts or total meat in smoker?

I have five six pound butts (prior to trimming fat). I can't imagine that means 45 hours of smoking. (30 lbs at 1.5 hrs a pound) I also can't imagine that it will be only nine hours.


Any ideas? I'm thinking putting them on at eleven tonight (in two and a half hours) in hopes they're done by three or four tomorrow.

Three on top and two on bottom or vice versa?

Also my first overnight cook. Can't imagine I'm going to sleep all that well as I worry about the grill. Will set temp alarm in case it goes under 200.

Thanks!
 
For that amount of meat, I'd figure 12 hours at 250-275 range should be fine. I typically do 8-9 pound butts which take 12 hours, so the smaller size combined with additional quantity should average out. If you're starting at 11pm for a 7pm dinner ---- you're ahead of the curve and good to go.
 
Ditto what Chad said... Don't forget to take pics and drink plenty of adult beverages. :)
 
Yeah I had this exact same dilemma earlier this year, but the overall cooking time depends more on the thickness of each individual piece of meat, rather than the total weight of all pieces combined. I did two 7 lb pieces and it really didn't take much longer than a single 7 lb butt. Only thing that might slow you down a bit is your cooker temp will drop more and take longer to recover with more pieces than with a single piece when you first put the meat on. The more cold mass that you add to the cooker the more energy it will soak up, which will take longer to get the cooker back to your target cooking temp.
 
No time difference unless the butts are jammed together. You will use more charcoal to keep your cooker up to temp and your vents will probably have to be opened more than normal to get and keep the temp up.
 
13 hours in. Food temp at 187 on one of them on the top grate. I tried to rotate an hour and a half ago but the first one I picked up started to come apart. I think I'm going to let them get to 200 before taking off.

The WSM is amazing. Stayed between 230 and 250 (at top grill) all night according to remote monitor. Managed to get almost six hours of sleep!

Thank you everybody for your advice. This is a great community!
 
Just took them off. They look great. One on the lower rack seems a bit less tender than the other four. I've got them wrapped in a cooler now. Going to see how long I can go as we're still four hours out to dinner.

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Went well. Only went through three of the butts. If it wasn't for the thunderstorm might have went through more.

One thing I noticed was that the meat lost about seven to ten degrees an hour in the cooler.
 
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