Stubborn Butt


 
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Bill Hays

Bill Hays

TVWBB Platinum Member
Has anyone else had a butt that just didn’t want to get to 195º? I cooked this butt starting Friday night and 23 hours later, it was only 187º. I used the BBQ Guru and held the pit temp (at the grate) at between 220 and 225º. Everything had been calibrated earlier in the week. Kingsford charcoal with 12 lit briqs on a full ring (MM) with 5 small to medium chunks of hickory. Outdoor temps between 45 and 70º. No wind overnight but winds up to around 10mph Saturday. Butt settled out at 181º at the 20 hour mark but was able to get it up to 187º by raising the pit temp at the end. Pulled the butt from the cooker and wrapped for 2 hours. The butt was very moist and there was no fat left to render, AND that Texas BBQ Rub has a pretty good bite. Added just a pinch of rub per sammich and used Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ Sauce ~ Damn, that’s good.

Anyway, here’s a graph of the cook:


Pork%20Butt%20with%20Texas%20BBQ%20Rub%20Graph%20Sm.jpg


Anyone else had a stubborn butt?
 
While I haven't had that exact experience, I do recall reading somewhat similiar posts in the last 6 months. At that point I believe Jim Minion said forget the therm and test for doneness otherwise. Such as ease of the probe going in and twist of meat fork. If it's done it's done and apparently yours was. You knew you cooked it long enough and cooked it correctly. It should have been done and it was.

Fortunately that experience doesn't happen often, because I know it can be frustrating.

Paul
 
We all expect butts to plateau in the 160's, and then take off towards the final temp in pretty linear fashion afterwards. If any of mine stop for an extended period after that, my first reaction is to poke the thermometer around a few other spots and take a consensus of readings. I usually find higher temps in other spots, and that, coupled with observations of how easily the thermometer probe is penetrating the meat, will usually lead me to pull it off, whether my preferred target of 205* has been achieved or not.

It looks like-- from your graph-- yours did a second plateau between 4pm and 9pm.
 
Bill,

That happened to me a few weeks back. Jim Minion finally put me out of my misery and said if they were on that long, they were done.

As usual, Jim was right...

Did you use the #1 Rub or the #2? I've used both and was real happy with both.
 
Paul, Doug and Tom,

I’ve read a few posts about that, too, but I’ve never had it happen to me before, so I decided to take as far as I could ~ I was pretty sure it was done at the 19 or 20 hour mark, the second plateau. I tried the bone pull test just before 7:30 PM, where the pit temp dropped and it was fairly loose. There wasn’t much fuel left and I wasn’t in a hurry, so I rapped the legs a couple of times before turning the blower back on and turned the Guru up to 250º to see how it would react.

Griff,

I set my laptop up with a webcam to look through a window at a couple of Nu-Temp 701’s that were monitoring the WSM and butt temps, and a clock. The webcam took a pic of these every 5 minutes and turned it into an AVI file. At the end, I played the file one frame at a time and entered the temps into Excel, then graphed it. Took about an hour and a half to enter the 524 temp data points, so I won’t be doing that for every cook. /infopop/emoticons/icon_eek.gif BTW, welcome to TVWB. /infopop/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

BTW, Tom, I used their #1 Rub this time. Good stuff!! Thanks /infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif

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With water in the pan I can't say I've ever got a butt up to 195 by cooking at <225. Usually I have to go up to ~250 to get to those temps...
 
I did 4 smaller butts on my WSM last weekend. I ended up pulling them off at 180-185. Let them sit an hour, then shredded.

They were a little tougher to pull than previous butts I have done to 195, but my family and I preferred the firmness.
 
Bill

I'm amazed you could have held that temp for sooo long. Did you literally not touch the WSM ? If the Guru can do that for an overnighter and is quick to take on and off the WSM, I'm getting more tempted. I sort of enjoy the interplay with the WSM on day time cooks, but overnighters are another thing entirely for me.

Paul.
 
Paul,

I added a charbroil chimney full of unlit coals at 2:15 Saturday afternoon. It didn’t need it yet and probably would have gone another 2 hours, but I knew the butt wasn’t going to get where I wanted it in that time so I added coals then so as not to take a chance on them going out and having to re-light.

As far as easy on and off, read this post (not sure if you saw it before). Also, my lower vents are pretty loose, so I taped all of them on the inside of the WSM. Not an issue for me since I always use the Guru. But hey, why not have 2 WSM’s? One with the Guru and one without? /infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif
 
I'll add my endorsement of the BBQ Guru. I tried it for the first time for an overnighter last Thursday/Friday. It couldn't have performed any better. The cooker temp was rock solid & my initial load of charcoal lasted the whole 17 hour cook. Without the Guru, I have always had to add new coals after 12 or so hours.
 
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