Party for 800

[dasmoke]

Grandparents 65th anniversary.  Making pp for the event.  This will be an open house party for 800 or so people.  PP sandwich, chips and and 4 different sides will be provided and cake.  If my math is correct I need 264 lbs of finished product so I need to start with 450 lbs of raw product.  I have a propane smoker that I can use that is 60x24x30 chamber.  Do you think that I can put 5-6 butts on a shelf 4 shelves tall so that I can do this in 2 days?  It is my buddies smoker that we only did 50lbs of summer sausage and snack sticks in so far.  I have my MES 30 that I have mastered but would take to long to do this project. 

Thank you,

Dasmoke

 

[SmokinAl]

As long as there is a little room between the butts so the smoke & heat can circulate you should be OK. Good luck that's quite an undertaking. Let us know how it turns out.

 

[bmudd14474]

I have a GOSM Big Block and have done 10 butts at once in there.

If you running the smoker non stop then 48 hours should do it if you get 150 lbs of meat on there at a time.  Just have a extra tank of propane around for it.

 

[tom37]

WOW....

What an undertaking. I'm with Al, so long as you have decent airflow then you should be fine being loaded heavy.

Just remember, loading um all at once is gonna tank the temps fast. 

Without seeing the rig you are using, I'm gonna throw this out there.

Maybe load 5 or 10 butts at a time, with enough time between loads for the temps to recover. 

If its a vertical I would load the top first or if its an offset then I would load the cold side first. 

This is strictly speculation on my part since I have never done a cook of this size.

I just figure this would help with getting past the 4 hours safe zone time frame.

The best of luck to ya and please nominate someone to take pics for ya during the cook as well as the final prep before serving. 

You might just be a little busy to take pics. LOL

I would love to see the spread after its all cooked up. 

 

[beer-b-q]

Definately We Want PICs...

 

[meateater]

Grandparents 65th anniversary.  Making pp for the event.  This will be an open house party for 800 or so people.  PP sandwich, chips and and 4 different sides will be provided and cake.  If my math is correct I need 264 lbs of finished product so I need to start with 450 lbs of raw product.  I have a propane smoker that I can use that is 60x24x30 chamber.  Do you think that I can put 5-6 butts on a shelf 4 shelves tall so that I can do this in 2 days?  It is my buddies smoker that we only did 50lbs of summer sausage and snack sticks in so far.  I have my MES 30 that I have mastered but would take to long to do this project. 

Thank you,

Dasmoke

450 #'s of meat would be 45 - 10# butts = 225 #'s a day. That's a long project to tackle. Even when I ran a BBQ joint that would have been a large project on a commercial smoker in a good sized restaurant. Good luck with the project. 

 Keep us posted. 

 

[dasmoke]

Thanks for the ideas.  It is an old commercial fridge turned into a smoker.  So it is a vertical unit.  Roughly 5 feet tall x30x24 is the chamber size.   Heat and airflow should not be a problem, we have a burner that is good size.  If I put 16 -10lb butts in their on four shelves, what do you think?  For some of you that smoked some big projects, what kind of time frame am i looking at for one load.  I usually kept my smoker in the 230 degree range.  In my MES with 2- 10lb butts I usually average 13 hours not foiled.  I think for this to speed up the time I will foil them.  Might not be for 2 more months but I want to see if I want to tackle this project or not.  I think it would be a fun and thirsty project with all the neighbors help.  Of course I would have to through in some ABT's for all the thirsty helpers time to time. 

Thank you,

Dasmoke

 

[africanmeat]

You are brave

 

[pineywoods]

Bring them butts on over and we can smoke them all at once

  Actually it will take a little more time but shouldn't be all that much more the main time difference will be when you first put them in and it starting to heat all that cold meat. Personally I'd run the smoker up to 275-300 before I opened it to put the meat in it will fall drastically when all that cold meat goes in. The smoking will be the easy part the pulling will be the real pain