How many butts can fit?

[tdunson]

I've cut my teeth cooking with guys that do a lot at a time. 300 butts is usually the minimum. I'm looking to build something bigger for myself and was curious what the opinions are on how many butts you can fit in a certain area. I was looking at a simple block smoker to do a pig cook and I know it'd be 8x4 ft of cooking surface the way I a do it. It's inevitable I'll end up cooking butts for my kids ball team so now I'm wondering about how many butts would fit. Most folks I've talked to say no more than 1 butt per sq ft but that seems like they'd have a lot of wasted space in between. I know they shouldn't be touching so the smoke can flow freely. So how many butts do yall think would fit on 32 sq ft.

 

[noboundaries]

A square foot is 144 square inches. 

Lets say a typical butt has a 9" by 5" footprint or 45 square inches. 

You only need a little space between them to start because they shrink as they cook.  So lets say the initial spacing is 1/4" between the butts, a

footprint of 9.125" by 5.125", or 46.8 square inches per butt.   

A 32 square foot cooking area is 4608 square inches.  98 butts, rounding down.