Advice on Pork Butt that plateaued at 172 degrees

[indysmokey]

Good evening,

I put a 10# pork butt on my smoker this morning  at 7:00 a.m. at 225 - 230 degrees. Around 3:00 p.m. the temperature plateaued at 152 degrees. I bumped the heat up to 250 degrees around 5:00 p.m. and the best I could get by 7:30 p.m. was 174 degrees. I brought the shoulder inside, placed covered in foil and put into the oven at 300 degrees in hopes of reaching 205 degrees to begin pulling.

I would appreciate any thoughts / comments / suggestions.

Thank you,

Lee

 

[cksteele]

yes thats the stall  you just gotta  keep cooking  till it pushes through.  my suggestion is cook at a higher  temp  that reduces  the stall  and the time in it. the lower the temp the worse it is 

 

[dward51]

What time do/did you need it or are you just cooking to have PP later mainly?  Since it's 174* at 7:30pm, I take it that you want the latter.  It should get to 200-205* in that oven with no problems.  Did you wrap it tightly or just loosely cover?  It needs to be wrapped tight or if its in a pan the pan needs to be sealed well with the foil.  The thing about a stall is no 2 seem to be the same, and they are over when they decide it's time to be over (without regard to any plans the pit master may have made for when the meat will be served

).

Or if you don't need it until tomorrow (July 4th), crank the oven down to 210* and leave it foiled all night.  Let's say it is done around 5am at the lower temp, then just keep it wrapped in foil and move it to as small of an ice chest/cooler that will hold it.  If you only have a bigger one, pad the area around the wrapped butt with towels and seal the cooler up.  It should hold until noon with no problems in any decent cooler.  It will still be too hot to pull with bare hands if you move it to the cooler quickly.

Or just reheat with some finishing sauce if you want to cook and pull it tonight and serve tomorrow.  I've used SoFLAQer's and Chef Jimmy J's and both are excellent for freshly pulled or reheats.

 

[indysmokey]

Thank you. I already took down the smoker for the evening so I will keep it in the oven covered at 300 degrees and check every hour. 

I have not had this issue before, but this is about twice the size of the typical butt I smoke.