30 lb Pork Shoulder-Results

BBQfan1

Down the post list a bit, you'll see that I posted about attempting to Egg up 30 lbs of pork shoulder at one time (two shoulders, one 16 lbs and one 14). Results and notes:
Started at 10:45 on Wednesday, with a set up of 4 firebricks flat on grill, drip pan with a Coke-water mixture, hickory, apple and pecan wood mixed throughout the full firebox of lump. A V-rack was set over the drip pan and the two shoulders wedged at 45-degree angle, butt-to-butt in the V-rack. Had to removed the BGE thermo to accomodate the roasts, but used Taylor remote to monitor cooking temp (no concern for meat temp for many hours to come).
Started off high as I overcompensated for mass of meat, cold bricks etc, then swung low (170 at lowest point overnight).
All day Thursday it held a beautiful 235-250 grill-level temp. At 3:40 Thursday, I removed meat/rack/drip pan, replenished lump while it was still light out, rotated the meat and pan 180 degrees and went back to it.
At midnight, the roasts broke through the plateau, into the mid 170's (I started monitoring meat temps about 8 pm). Had the BGE thermo stuck in the daisy wheel hole and it was registering a solid 250. Nice.
Went to bed at 1:30; temp of roasts were 181 and 176. Put the Taylor into the lower-temped roast. Knew it wouldn't be too long moving up from there, so set alarm for 4:10 am.
Got up and came down to a reading of 204 internal. Perfect. Didn't exactly feel like spending an hour pulling 20 lbs of meat right then, so wrapped in foil and set in 170° oven.
Let roasts more or less rest at that temp til 9:30 am, when I started the pulling process.
Total cooking/wrapped time: 34.75 hours.
End results were pretty good. The edges of some of the meat was overdone, where meat extended beyond the drip pan/fire bricks. Only a minimal amount of meat was lost; 4-5 oz total: no complaints though for such a big cook. I give Stogie's injection liquid credit for the incredible moisture of the inner parts of each roast. I have no shame in turning over these roasts for others to consume.
One negative comment was that roasts were up against dome walls and when I opened the 3-4 times to spritz with apple juice, the pools of meat juices collected on the gasket ran off onto the deck. Nothing that soap and water won't fix, but it's a bit of a mess in -10 celcius weather. The Egg itself is pretty gungy with drippings. Needs a high-heat cook to clean it up.
I took a few snaps of the set-up for this one and also the ending result of meat (using 60% yield, that would be 18-19 lbs!) that I'll try and get scanned and posted in the near future.
Qfan

HolySmokes

BBQfan1,
As a new egger, I'm going for a second spatchcocked chicken tonight (hats off to the one who perfected this recipe for the goodness of us all and apologies for forgetting at this moment) and you are working on nearly thirty five hours and almost as many lbs. of pork! I am envious and as soon as I quit drooling, I'm headed to the grocery....for chicken.

sdbelt

BBQfan1,[p]That sounds like an excellent result. I've done two 8 lb butts before, but that was comparatively easy. I've also used the "wrapped in foil in the oven 'till morning" trick, often enough.[p]Good stuff![p]--sdb