My first low and slow

Congrats. You just screwed up your first low and slow. If you are too lazy to wake up every few hours to check on the temp then maybe you should get a BBQ Guru or Stoker.

why are you saying its screwed up??? its just done early....yes, he should have checked it for temps as he obviously had a temp spike and lost control of where he was during the night....and i own a guru so i can sleep all night in peace....but 205 internal temp is far from screwed up. ..

but 205 internal temp on pork butts that size is no way ruined or unsalvagable....go pull the damned things. ..

taste it!!

doest it still taste good???

does it have any moistness to it??

or is it totally dried out???

add some apple cider vinager to it, add some apple juice to it, add some bbq sauce to it...how is it now??? moist and flavorful enough to serve??...

ok....if it is, then seal it up in large baggies and refrigerate till later today when you are ready to serve it....

when you are ready to serve, put the pulled pork in a large serving tray, sealed very tight with aluminum foil, and warm it up in your oven at around 250 -300 degrees till warmed up....taste it again....if its not moist enough, again treat it with a little of the vinager/juice/sauce mix....

you be the judge...but i'm betting it will be fine!....and still better than anything your guests have ever eaten before....

if you had big chunks of wood in there, perhaps one of them caught fire rather than just smoldering. ...depends on just how tight your vents were....typically to maintain lo and slo temps, you bottom slot should be open about the width of a credit card and the daisy wheel holes on top are just open enough to maintain that temp as well ....

but sometimes it comes down to "S$%T happens"...between snuffing your fire and having a spike like that ....before i started using gurus for overnight cooks, i would check my eggs every 2 - 3 hours just to make sure somethng like this didn't happen... peace of mind.....

i agree with you frank. ..and once i read his response to you that he is serving at noon. ..i further agree with you...wrap them whole....pull them later, and then if they are a little dry, do the vinager/juice/sauce mix to moisten them up if need be....i think he's gonna be just fine and have a great end result....

if you are doing a lot of overnight cooks, you just can't be a bbq guru....here is their website....

you can go from the most simple (the nano) that simply holds pit temps - thats all i use....up to the fancy shmancy that controls multiple pits with remote controls etc....

they are extremely well made, very accurate, and fred/bob/kenny provide the best customer service around!!....depending on where you live, you will see the guys at local bbq competitions competing as well, and you can find their stuff often times sold in specialty retailers that also sell bge's and other smokers...

http://www.thebbqguru.com/

Screwing up is when you don't get up to check on your egg and then find the temp down to 140 when you do. Butt is forgiving, and easy enough to remedy if it does get a little dry. Congrats on waking up to a finished butt rather than a cold egg!

PS: I haven't read the rest of the posts yet, but I would always check the meat temp w/ a Thermapen before removing just to make sure my probes were accurate, not touching bone, etc.

That is quite surprising that your butts cooked from fridge (right?) to 205F in 7.5 hours - even at 300F, that's really fast.

I think you may have a thermometer calibration issues here as well. Once the egg has cooled down I would check it.

I'm not a huge fan of stokers or guru's b/c although they are fun toys, they just usually aren't necessary. If you have the egg stabilized for an hour, it should hold temp just fine within 20F overnight. It does help those worry warts though.

PS Sorry about my doppelganger, and thanks V.I. for the defense - did you know I found out who the person who impersonated me was that started out problems?