Are my butts OK???

Smoking Jacket

Cooking my first overnight butts last night. I put them on around 10:00 and after stabilizing the egg for about 45 minutes at 250. Everything was great, right at 250 up till I went to bed at 2:00 am. Woke up a 6:00 am and the dome temp was at 200 and internal meat thermometer was at 152. I have been bumping the vents ever so slightly trying to get back to 250. I also threw a couple of fatties on so this didn't help my climb. [p]Are the butts OK at 200 dome and 150ish internal?

egret

Smoking Jacket,
You're doing great with the butts! Keep on truckin'......You've got some good eatin' in your near future.

stike

egret,
try to bump to 250. you may need to stick a bit of coathanger through the lower vent and wiggle the lump grate a bit to dislodge ash. don't wiggle too hard or the lump will come rolling down.[p]as for temps, you are fine.

SmokinGuitarPlayer

Smoking Jacket,[p]I had the exact same thing happen last week. I just opened things up until temps came up .... stabilized again ... went until the end and it got great!!

Smoking Jacket

It was a near disaster, nothing I did helped me get the temp back to 250. I used a coat hanger to clear out the holes and felt NOTHING above. Finally I took the butts off, the grid off, the platesetter off and discovered that the only thing I had left was a small bit of lump around the perimeter of the fire box. I quickly got more lump..a little more wood and my MAPP and restarted the fire to finish the cook. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that these turn out OK. When I put the butts back on and reinserted the probe I had not lost a single digit in temperature still at 163.

thirdeye

Smoking Jacket,[p]Whenever something like this happens on a long cook, and it might never happen to you again now that you can judge the amount of lump you need, the first fix is to just move the meat into a 250° oven. Then take your time in re-starting the fire, letting it settle down, putting that hot plate setter in, maybe emptying the drip pan and letting the Egg get back up to working temperatures. Even if this takes an hour or longer, the meat will be right at home in the oven until it can come back out to the cooker.[p]~thirdeye~

Smoking Jacket

thirdeye,[p]thanks for the tip...why I didn't think of that I don't know, guess I was too worried about re-starting the fire. Right now it is at 250 dome and the smaller butt is at 186.[p]thanks again...what did people do before internet message/forum boards?

EggEd

Smoking Jacket,
I fill my large Egg with lump right to the very top of the fire ring for long cooks. I have cooked for as long as 22 hours. The lump left over suggest to me that some of the claims made onf this forum of 30 hour cooks are doable. I use the "Elder Ward" (see his pulled pork recipe on the BGE website) fire building method although it seems many just dump the lump straight in and go even for long cooks and never have any issues. I do not have a guru or stoker temp controller yet so I like to build a careful fire and let the Egg do it's stuff.[p]I have started a 10lb butt at 7pm tonight and my Maverick ET-73 has had some grid temp fluctuations of 8 or 9 degrees but is humming along with no adjustments to the vents. [p]Many suggest that on long cooks the dome temp and grid temp converge rather than have the 20-40 degree difference for shorter cooks. [p]good luck