Second Butt cook...

ILL--EGGER

Started two 8# Picnic shoulders last night at 9:30 P.M. and set my GURU 2 for the first time. Application was easy and it stabalized the egg at 250 fairly quickly. I woke up and checked the meat at 6:30 am to find everything moveing along perfectly. About two hours later I checked on it and the temp. was dropping and not recovering so I opened the lid and found the lump was burning out of the center, as I expected, and quickly knocked some lump from the side and closed it up to let the Guru do its thing. Brought it right back up to temp. in no time. About 30min. after I check again to see the temp. hitting 272 :blink: now. I leave it alone knowing that its gotta be just the fresh lump takeing off and it did cool back to 250 and is holding there steady again. Anyone else experience these things? I'll post pic's later as I haven't taken any yet.

TomM24

The first and so far only time I tried to do a low temperature cook with the Guru. I found out that to keep the temp low I needed to close off the fan to the snallest marked opening. It was a windy day blowing into the fan.

Dan in StL

Good luck with yours. I'm having my own challenges doing my first one (See "Butt Problems" below. I'm doing mine without the benefit of a Guru. Sounds like you're in good shape though.

Dan in STL

ILL--EGGER

I did my first Pork butt without the Guru and was lucky enough to hold steady temps. throughout. I will admit I cooked it a little hotter than most suggest (~275-285) but it worked great and tasted even better. I couldn't get that 250 mark to stay for me.
This time the Guru is working it's magic and must say it sure makes life easy for $250 investment. Thanks for the replies and hope your Butts turn out as well as I'm sure they will .

Fidel

The guru devices will cause a center burn if you only light your fire in one place. I light mine is 3-4 places. I set my initial temps at 275 and get it there for an hour or so, then cut them down. About 10-15 minutes after the meat is added. This get a good burn going and I have not yet (*knocks wood*) had a fire issue.

I do use a long ranger to stir the lump after 10 hours or so, but more to generate more smoke than to stoke the fire.

Like stated above, choke down the fan damper to 1/3 or so to throttle back the air being blown in. The temps will maintain without spiking that way. If you leave the fan damper wide open and the temp drops then the fan will work a little too hard and your temps will spike up.

ILL--EGGER

Great advice and appreciate the quick response. I have the fan set half open. I did only light the fire in one spot and will do several next time as I do think that was my problem this time. I'm only a couple hours away now so it shouldn't be a problem to finish off the cook at this point.