Well if it could have gone wrong, it did. I finally managed to get all 200lbs off, pulled and delivered about an hour later than what I wanted.
Let me count the adversity I had to deal with last night.
1. For some reason I inexplicably had almost a full rack of butts done done after 5 hours. Still not sure what that was about.
2. When I tasted a bit of the quick finished butts they tasted and smelled horrid, I thought the meat had gone bad. My folks tried it later and sad it tasted and smelt fine. I’ve been congested this week so I’m attributing it to that. But that’s a bad thought at 2:30am that you might have 200lbs of bad meat.
3. On my way to my folk’s to check on my cook at 2:30am I got pulled over for failure to use my turn signals. Using them is a pet peeve of mine, but I live in a small town and at 2:30 nobody is out. Thankfully no ticket, and I actually work with one of the officer’s wife.
4. After I pulled and cambro’d the early butts, I left and when I got back home I checked my temperature from my phone only to see my cook chamber temperature wasn’t recovering even with the fan on full. I realized I must have went through more charcoal. Drove back out, dumped a half used bag in it only to find out that the half used bag had a ton of charcoal dust. I contemplated dumping the whole lot and starting fresh, but thankfully the temperature came back.
5.Went back home and back to sleep around 4, woke up at 6:30 and headed back out. Some of my butts were done, most of them were still in the middle of the stall. Started pulling and panning what I could, I also cranked the pit temp. Ended up pulling some off, panning them and throwing them in the over to finish. Finally got everything to pull temp and managed to finish.
As good as my cook went last week, this was a complete 180. I’m exhausted and ready for a nap.
