Planning a Smoke ahead of time

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slickuser

Newbie
Original poster
May 20, 2016
4
10
Eastern Washington State
I will be attempting my first multi meat smoke in about a week and a half. I plan on smoking both a pork butt as well as some loin ribs. I am new to smoking and have been trying to consume as much knowledge as I can. I am going to try and write out what I will be attempting to produce in hopes that other users will be able to point out anything that I am missing.

I will be smoking with a Smoke Vault 24.

It is easy to determine that pork butt will take much longer than my ribs, so I will be staggering the start of different meats. I will have a 7.2 pound pork butt and two racks of baby backs. I have allotted 14 hours for the pork butt. I do not plan to wrap any meat in foil, I enjoy a good bark. Here is a hopeful timeline:
  1. June 1 - 5pm.  I will prep the meat by rinsing, trimming, and salting
  2. June 2 - 12:30am. I will fire up the smoker and bring it up to 225. I add the Pecan chunks and start producing smoke
  3. June 2 - 1:00am. I will dampen the pork butt with water and add a rub. Then straight to the smoker.
  4. June 2 - 1:30am to 5:30am. I will be adding more Pecan chunks when the smoke starts to dwindle.
  5. June 2 - 11:00am. I will prep beans in a pan for the smoker.
  6. June 2- 12:00pm. I will add more Pecan Chunks, two racks of baby backs, and a pan of beans. I will place the bean under the ribs for drippings.
  7. June 2 - 1:00 pm. I will make a slaw
  8. June 2 - 3:00pm. Hopefully removing the pork butt. It will be wrapped and placed into a cooler with towels.
  9. June 2 - 4:00pm. Hopefully removing the ribs.
  10. June 2 - 5:00pm. Serve the food
  11. June 3 - all day. Enjoy extra ribs and leftover pulled pork
I may end up shifting the times up just to make sure the pork butt finishes on time. I do not yet have an accurate weather forecast which might affect my times.

At step 1, Have I let the salt sit on the meat for too long?

At step 3, should I place the butt on an upper or lower rack?

At step 7, I am not very familiar with good slaw. I have found there are two main varieties, sweet/sour and creamy. Does one type seem to be more preferred to be served along the pulled pork?

Will I be adding too much smoke to the pork butt? I understand "too much" is really a personal preference, but I am mostly curious if I will run into any issues by starting the butt with smoke, letting the smoke dwindle and stop, and then adding more smoke when the ribs are added. I have not found much information about that specific problem.

Can anyone think of anything I may not be accounting for?

Thanks

slicku
 
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