Whole Lotta Butt...


 
One 22.5" WSM?

Hate to be the one to lift the center section off and reload the coal bed (just in case)! :eek:

Good luck on your cook nevertheless. I'm sure it will go well.

I've done four butts at once on the 18.5" model with great results.
 
Rusty James said:
One 22.5" WSM?

Hate to be the one to lift the center section off and reload the coal bed (just in case)! :eek:

Good luck on your cook nevertheless. I'm sure it will go well.

I've done four butts at once on the 18.5" model with great results.
Click to expand...

To make things more interesting, I pulled something in my back yesterday morning, so even lifting the unloaded center section is going to be difficult. These are all just about 8 pounds each, so they may fit right on the grates. If not, I have some raised wire racks that I've used in the past for doubling the capacity of my 18.5.
 
Very aggressive cook Chad. Looking forward to seeing your pictures. I'd be interested in seeing your raised wire racks if you end up using them. Take care of that back.
 
WOW!!! That's going to be one BIG cook looking forward to seeing more pics on it. Good LUCK.
 
Hope you aren't planning on eating all that at once? :p

You might try tying each butt with a few winds if string & make a handle so you could lift each one individually.
Might help when loading/unloading/switching racks.

Will be watching to see how this goes.
 
ChadVKealey said:
To make things more interesting, I pulled something in my back yesterday morning, so even lifting the unloaded center section is going to be difficult. These are all just about 8 pounds each, so they may fit right on the grates. If not, I have some raised wire racks that I've used in the past for doubling the capacity of my 18.5.
Click to expand...


Looks like someone could figure out a way to mechanically hoist the center section on large loads. Make for an interesting project.
 
Sorry, no pics yet. I ended up not using the raised racks because they weren't tall enough. When I've used them before, it was for stacking half-sized steam table pans full of mac & cheese for baking in the old 18.5, and for that purpose, they're great. With these butts, the rack would have been sitting right on them, so it'd be like a big stack of meat. I went with the traditional, "just lay 'em flat on the rack" approach. Choosing the narrower butts for the bottom rack, this worked OK. They were still touching when I loaded everything up, but I figured they'd shrink a bit and separate.

I loaded everything up and put the meat on at 10:00 last night with the PartyQ set to 235.

I woke up around 5:30 and noticed the pit temp was down to 205. I don't know if the poor PartyQ ever got up to temp. It was at 185 when I fell asleep and my maverick was reading about 240. The PartyQ probe is clipped to the center of the lower grate, in between but not touching any of the meat on the lower rack. I also arranged the upper rack so that nothing should be dripping on the probe.

So, I added another half bag of charcoal, one compact chimney of it was fully lit, and it's slowly coming back up to temp.

And no, I'm not eating all of this myself. In the past, I've done smaller scale cooks (4 at a time in the 18.5) for friends who love BBQ but don't have the means to make their own. I charge $3/lb, which is basically a break-even price. Actually, factoring in fuel, I'm probably losing some money on the deal. However, I'm not losing much, and I'm learning a lot, so it's worth it to me. Now that I have a bigger smoker, I opened it up for Facebook friends with a cap of 40 pounds. Within an hour I was putting folks on a waiting list.

So, hopefully the temps bounce back and the additional fuel I added gets these butts finished. I set 6 PM tonight as the pickup time, so I think I'll make it. They're all between 150-165 right now, so starting the stall. I'm going to let them go until noon and if the temps are still too low, transfer them to the oven to finish. Not planning to wrap unless I move them to the oven. In hindsight, it would have been a good idea to tie them with some twine to keep the compact and also make them easier to remove, but it's a bit late for that now.
 
ChadVKealey said:
And no, I'm not eating all of this myself. In the past, I've done smaller scale cooks (4 at a time in the 18.5) for friends who love BBQ but don't have the means to make their own. I charge $3/lb, which is basically a break-even price. Actually, factoring in fuel, I'm probably losing some money on the deal. However, I'm not losing much, and I'm learning a lot, so it's worth it to me. Now that I have a bigger smoker, I opened it up for Facebook friends with a cap of 40 pounds. Within an hour I was putting folks on a waiting list.
Click to expand...

Hope you have good liability insurance. & proper licensing.
 
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Sorry, didn't get any photos, but will say that 8 butts is doable, but not ideal for the 22.5. They fit, but a couple of them on the bottom got some really crusty edges. I think 6 would be a better choice.

66.3 pounds of pork went on, producing about 36.5 pounds of pulled pork. I also went through about 1.5 bags of KBB (the 18.6 pounders) and found that the PartyQ couldn't quite keep up the temp with that much meat in there.

As for insurance and licensing, this isn't a commercial venture. Everyone who's "buying" has had my pulled pork at a scout event or family BBQ. I'm working on finding out what I need (in terms of licenses, insurance, etc.) to start a very small scale catering business. I'm using cooks like this to get a baseline on production & operating costs and helping to develop some references.
 
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