Hi there and welcome!!!
Pork butts and briskets really don't care what temp you smoke them at as long as you aren't burning them or going too low.
I would suggest you crank the heat up to 275F and all your problems will be solved.
Also I kind of "butterfly" mine a bit but only because it increases the flavor and I only buy 8pound or larger butts.
From the meat side I cut straight down until I hit the bone to where I can kind of butterfly the whole thing a little bit.
This allows me to get seasoning in there, smoke in there, more smoke penetration into the meat, and finally more bark everywhere. With the split there is more surface area for seasoning and bark and with the meat being almost in 2 smaller chunks the smoke penetrates into more meat from the increased surface area.
I've found I don't need to mix in any additional seasoning or have a finishing sauce when I pull the pork. I just pull it and go and all the flavor is there!
I hope this info helps you out.
Here is a post showing what I'm talking about :)
Well a few weekends ago I did 2 pork butts at 17.5 pounds total. I butterflied them so that the pork butts were more like butts hahaha. The reason I did this was to: get more seasoning on the meat for flavor get more bark because there was now more surface area get more smoke flavor and...
www.smokingmeatforums.com