MES with full load of butts

[smokeguy]

[font=times new roman, new york, times, serif]Time for a big ol' batch of pulled pork. [/font]
[font=times new roman, new york, times, serif]Living in Texas I just had to go "big", so I got 8 of them critters for a total of 61.67 lbs of butts. [/font]

[font=times new roman, new york, times, serif]Got them all rubbed up and into the MES around 8 pm.




Here's a couple of interesting shots. These were taken at 2:30 and was in the high 30's.
I last had added wood at 1:10 so all of that was way gone by then.
That means that all of this is cooking/water vapors. Very good smelling I might add!






Here’s what they looked like when they hit 165 and were ready to be foiled.





Yawn! At 6:15 the ET-73s beeped to tell me it was time to wake up again and get back to work.
The meat was at 200.
I don’t have nearly enough coolers to handle 8 of these things
(although with the oven and nuker I could have made it happen),
so I figured this was a good time to see how well the MES was insulated.
I set it to 100 and yes, went back to bed. After all, it was pretty cold out there at 34 degrees!
Back up at 8:30 and everything is holding beautifully -not cooking,
but resting just like it would have in a cooler wrapped in towels.

I don’t have a shot of all the finished meat because as I pulled a couple,
I’d get them vacuum packed and put them into the refrigerator to get them started cooling down.
I ended up with 33 finished pounds of pork (plus some mighty tasty nibbles along the way
for quality control purposes!),
so about half of the weight I started at.

Wish you could have been there to smell it (and pull/pack it

)!

[/font]

 

[the dude abides]

Man you had thing loaded. Is all this for personal use or are you catering something?

I know what you mean about the steam. I've done some smokes in the winter using my WSM. It's tough to tell sometimes what's steam and what's smoke.

for a big 'ol smoke.

 

[fire it up]

So many butts it is like a rap video!

 

[zeeker]

Wow, now that's a load of pork SG. What you feeding a army today Bud... Kudos and

for a full smoker...

 

[new vision]

That's a lot of BUTT!!!!

 

[denver dave]

Those look great. I go down that road every year for a neighborhood picinic. Last year do 8 Butts. Are you catering or just have a lot of hungry friends???? When is dinner????

 

[mballi3011]

I think I would frame that picture. that is the FULLEST MES smoker that I have ever seen. Yes you better have a couple of good size coolers for all of that. Great Job with all of them

for even attemping that smokefor sure. Hey this isn't for that 600 lb sausage gig next weekend is it???

 

[rbranstner]

You are going to have a nice little stock pile of PP on your hands. I wouldn't mind doing the same thing but my freezer is packed all the way to the top.

 

[smokeguy]

Thanks folks!

I've got some folks coming over for the weekend, and some of it is to restock for those times you've just got to have some pulled pork NOW!

 

[miamirick]

man, i havent seen that much butt since the last time i was in overtown!!
how many times did you have to empty the drip pan?
why is it that if you cook 50 lbs of meat, it looks so much better than 5 lbs?

 

[insight]

BABY GOT BACK!!!

 

[werdwolf]

Nice job

The most I've put into my MES is 6. That top rack can be a little short on height.

 

[smokeguy]

I had the water pan filled pretty high to help keep the preheat temps up when I added all of the meat. When I was shooting the steam pictures I noticed that the overflow pan in back was almost full.

Looked inside and the water pan was overflowing and the drip pan on the bottom was covered and filling up because the hole to the overflow pan was slowly getting clogged arteries I guess from the cold night air cooling off the fats as they came through, and building up more and more.

I ended up taking a turkey baster and sucked out the water pan and then added 1/2 pan hot water, then thinking "no sweat" I slid the overflow off of the back spilling half of it. After that I pulled out some more one more time but didn't have any more spills. A bit of hot water cleared out my clogging overflow drain.

 

[beer-b-q]

Lot of nice butts...

 

[deltadude]

That's so much pork the only thing your missing are the hoofs and the snout.

Nice job with the MES, the 40" MES is a awesome smoking tool for the home smoker, not to big for just one butt or a couple of racks of ribs, yet big enough to handle a big job like yours. I think in a pinch you could have squeezed in 4 more butts if the size was right.

How many hours was that cook, start to finish, not counting the holding time?

Big Smoke from the little smoker that could...

 

[smokeguy]

I started them at right around 8 pm in the preheated smoker (set at 225, which on mine averages 235-250 or so "real" temperatures) and they hit 200 at 6:15 am, so about 10 1/4 hours.

 

[gruelurks]

Nice! Makes me regret not having a 40" when I did those 80# of butts last summer, which took me three days lol.

 

[chainsaw]

Man that looks sweet-sometimes I wish I could load my smoker up like that-(older MES) great presentaion!

 

[bottomline]

That's an awesome site. I know they smelled and tasted as good as the looked. Thanks!!

 

[pignit]

Shweeeeeet!