New here..... 56k Warning....big pictures...

Hello everybody, I'm new here to the forum, and I just started smoking recently after purchasing a Master Forge Charcoal Smoker from Lowes, which from what I've heard is alot like some of the older Webber smokers they used to sale. Anyway, my first experiment was some Chuck Roasts that had been sitting in our freezers for a while, they turned out ok, tho I believe we may have put a pinch too much Cheyene Pepper in the dry rub, but it was still good, just a lil spicy....LOL So then for Mothers Day I smoked Spare Ribs, Baby Back ribs, and brats and a smoked sausage. Which I think, I might have messed up and kept my temp a little high around 250 ish, may have been closer to 275. The Spare ribs (which where on the bottom grate) were a little tough, the baby backs were on top, but still didn't have that fall of the bone type of texture I was looking for. But still were good. Now we just purchased our first pig and had it slaughtered, I went and picked up the meat last week, and I tried a Boston Butt today. Now I've been reading around for a couple of minutes on here and I think I already kinda know what I've done wrong but anyway this is what I did.... I dry rubbed it yesterday with some Memphis Style dry rub wrapped it up and put it out in the fridge over night. Today after getting my temp stable in my smoker at 225, I put it on and put my probe in it and let it go, I did make up a dip to put on it to keep it from drying out, so I did pop the lid every now and then to put on the dip. The temp in my smoker stayed around the 200 to 225 range for most of the cooking time. This was a 7.5lb Boston Butt, we smoked it for almost 8 hours, and I thought the temp for it to be done was 170 internal temp, and when it reached that we took it off. But now after reading a couple of posts I now know it needed to hit about 195. Is this why it doesn't want to tear apart easily? Also I'm hoping I just didn't make my whole family sick by not reaching 195 degrees....

My first two Chuck Roasts....






Mother's Day Feast.....










What I did today......





So I put the rest of what's left from the Boston Butt in a cast iron pot in the oven at 200 for now, and hopefully after it cooks on there for a while it will be more of the pulled pork type of Boston Butt....Any suggestions, comments, are greatly appreciated!!!

Thanks everyone on your responses! Yeah I can't wait to see how the rest of the Butt turns out after being in the oven for a while. Not sure what I'll be Qing next, can't wait though to try some more, I'm also thinking of constructing a Big Baby Double-Barreled Cooker soon hopefully, I need to acquire the drums first, someone told me Rural King sales "Trash 55 gallon barrels" so I'm not so sure if they would have residue from chemicals in them or not, strangely enough tho, 55 gallon drums are hard to come by around here.....or maybe I'm just not looking in the right place...

Looks good to me. :thumb: I'm new too and I just picked up the same grill as you a couple of weeks ago. How do you like it? I haven't been able to use it due to weather, but I have a butt and some brats on deck for when it clears.

JGroom, it's nice the only complaint tho is that when putting it together one of the wingnuts was bigger than the bolt, but I found another nut in my spare parts bin that worked out perfectly, and so far the temp on the gauge on the lid is usually 25 degrees cooler than the actual temp on the cooking surface....other than that don't drop the lid, even on the carpet, cus that's where I dropped mine and kinda bent it outta shape a bit, but I got it pretty much bent back into shape. Other than that, great experience with it....

Well after letting the Butt sit in the cast iron crock pot in the oven for about 4 to 5 hours at 200 degrees this is what I'm left with...

damn it's good....LOL