Had a question for you all. I'm very new here and up to this point have used SMF as a resource library. I have had a WSM for about 9 months now and have smoked about 5 or 6 times. I love smoking pork shoulder because of the relatively low expense per loads of pulled pork.
Anyway...on to my question. I've read here that the smoke time for a shoulder should be around 1.5 hours per pound. I've found for me it's more like 2.5 hours per pound. This weekend I started a butt at midnight and it wasn't done until 6pm the next evening (193 degrees). Am I doing something wrong?
My procedure is to load the charcoal ring FULL of lump charcoal. Then I use a chimney starter (about 1/3 full) to get some hot coals...dump them on the unlit coals, and let it work. I can maintain 250 degrees for about 6 hours with very little effort. I find that the temperature of the shoulder will get up to about 160 after about 9 hours, but then falls and will take up to 4 or 5 hours to get up and above that point again. Please help if I'm doing something wrong. These sleepless nights are killing me.
Also had a couple other questions if anyone can help. I usually put 5 chunks of wood on the coals. Should I ever be replacing them? Or is that just for chips? Also, would the temperature be different on the bottom grate as opposed to the top grate?
I appreciate your guys' help...and really appreciate all the knowledge and pictures on this forum!
Anyway...on to my question. I've read here that the smoke time for a shoulder should be around 1.5 hours per pound. I've found for me it's more like 2.5 hours per pound. This weekend I started a butt at midnight and it wasn't done until 6pm the next evening (193 degrees). Am I doing something wrong?
My procedure is to load the charcoal ring FULL of lump charcoal. Then I use a chimney starter (about 1/3 full) to get some hot coals...dump them on the unlit coals, and let it work. I can maintain 250 degrees for about 6 hours with very little effort. I find that the temperature of the shoulder will get up to about 160 after about 9 hours, but then falls and will take up to 4 or 5 hours to get up and above that point again. Please help if I'm doing something wrong. These sleepless nights are killing me.
Also had a couple other questions if anyone can help. I usually put 5 chunks of wood on the coals. Should I ever be replacing them? Or is that just for chips? Also, would the temperature be different on the bottom grate as opposed to the top grate?
I appreciate your guys' help...and really appreciate all the knowledge and pictures on this forum!