Pork Butts Rubbed w/ Peach Preserves and Apple Butter (and Some Pizza Pics)

After salivating over @YukonRon and @maso's adventures with using preserves, which you can see here and here, respectively, I thought I'd give it a go.  After buying a two-pack of boneless butts at Costco, I thought I'd slather one butt in peach preserves, and one in apple butter, using these pairings:



Pretty standard procedure:

1. Rub with prepared mustard.
2. Apply rub.
3. Slather with preserves or butter.

Prepped for the Egg, they looked like this:



I used apple wood chunks for smoking, and an Egg Genius to keep the Egg at ~225ºF. For the lump, I used Fogo, which I only use for smoking, since it's expensive, but usually has really big chunks of lump that are good for long cooks.  I filled out the rest with BGE Oak & Hickory Lump Charcoal. Even though I used the Genius, I still took a few minutes to:

1. Arrange the charcoal by chunk size, putting the larger chunks around the starter.
2. Make sure that all of the ventilation holes in the firebox were unobstructed.
3. Make sure the firebox was full.

(I note this for folks who might be new to the Egg. It makes a lot of difference in temperature control, I've found.)

Since I've been working nights, I put the butts on around 2300, figuring they'd be close to done by the following afternoon. I've never done a smoke for that long, so I was a bit nervous. There was no reason to be, it turned out, since I could've put them on closer to noon the previous day and they'd have been done around 1000-noon the next day. As it was I crutched 'em with some heated apple juice around 1500 the next afternoon. Weirdly, the larger one made it to 200ºF in another 90 minutes, while the smaller one I finally pulled off at 2200. (My guests and family were already full from eating the first one, so no one was waiting for the second.)  Here they are before wrapping them in butcher paper and foil:



Though they hadn't been brined, both turned out really well.  Both had great flavor and were moist and tender. Here's the shredded peach preserve-slathered one. Forgot to take the picture until after a couple of folks had descended on it:



Here's the second one after I shredded it:



Since using apple butter was an unknown quantity, I was more nervous about it than the other, but it turned out well, and I'd use it again.  Since those aren't the prettiest photos, here are some pictures of pizzas I baked on the Egg last week:



Enjoy, I hope.