The Pork Butt that Wouldn't Finish

BeanieAU22

Guys:

I am a proud new owner of a LBGE, and I couldn't be happier.  I have cooked several steaks and a couple of slabs of ribs, and they were fantastic.  This weekend I decided to throw on a couple of bone in pork butts for the first time for some folks coming over to watch football.  I picked up two 4lb butts, and I was ready to go.  I made the following assumptions:

1. A 4lb butt should easily take 8 hours at 225 to get to internal temp of 200 degrees

2. Cooking time should be calculated by weight of each butt rather than combined weight of both

3. If I start it a 10am it should be ready to serve (including foil time) at 7pm.

Well I got the butts on at 10am, made sure temp stabilized at 225, and went to the Titans/Ravens game.  I got back home at 4pm and the dome temp was the same when I left it.  I checked the internal temp and it was 145.  Checked again at 6pm-internal temp of 150.  Checked at 7pm-Internal temp of 155.  At this point, I sent my wife to the local BBQ place to buy a few pounds of pulled pork just to satisfy our guests.  I continued to smoke to at least enjoy it on Monday.  I checked the temp at 11pm and it still was no where close.  I went to sleep and woke up at 4am and temp was 185.  At this point I wrapped them in foil, set the oven to 200, and went back to bed.  I pulled them at 6am.  

So to recap, these butts were on for 16 hours, and they still did not finish.  I have checked my dome thermometer and my meat thermometer with the boiling water test, and they were both accurate.

What do yall think?  I can only come up with two things that I did wrong.  

1. My drip pan was too heavy duty and it absorbed much of the heat.

2. My butts weren't far apart enough on the grate, and the meat acted like one piece instead of two.  

Needless to say, I am going to be more leery of cooking pork butt for events.  Was this just a fluke?

crghc98

225 dome is like 200 grate temp.....so it will take a long time to bring that butt up to temp.  most run the dome around 250 for these cooks.  you can always crank it up at the end too without hurting it, just tent with foil if the bark is getting too dark for your liking.

ChokeOnSmoke

Like others have said, temp way to low.  You were trying to get your meat to 200 degrees and the temp at the grid level was probable at about 200.  It was just never going to happen.