I want pulled pork for Lunch tomorrow, and sleep tonight. Any Hints?

As the title of the thread says, I want to have pulled pork tomorrow Saturday) at lunch between noon and 1pm.

I'm going to pick up a butt tonight after work. I would say the butts at the local butcher are in the 8-10lb range. It'll be going on a 55gal UDS. I will run lump or a mix of lump and RO briquettes and fist size hickory chunks.

I also want as much sleep as possible.

I'll inject and rub the butt as soon as I get home tomorrow. I've done only a handful of pork butts ever. All on the UDS. I have tried low and slow and hot and fast, and both have turned out decently. I have a plain jane wireless thermometer that I can use to measure internal temp. I've got a deep fryer thermometer stuck into the side of the UDS to measure grate temps near the center of the grate.

I don't have enough experience to say whether to start it low and slow (200-250F) before midnight, or hot and fast (275-350F) at 3-4am in the morning.... As I type this now, I am thinking starting a butt at 3am in the morning may not be my cup of tea. The last few butts usually take at least 1hr to get going, (starting the chimney, fiddling with thermometers, lighting the basket etc., unwrapping the plastic saran from the butt). I don't know how well I can get back to sleep after getting that all done....

I plan to have my android phone setup as a webcam, aimed at the deep fryer thermometer in the side of the UDS. I should be able to just set an alarm by my bed and take a peek at the UDS with it through the night at 90-120minute intervals on my tablet....

Advice appreciated for a newbie.

Thanks,
Peter

thanks guys. I'll let you know how it goes. Unfortunately I don't have a Maverick or iGrill therm at the moment, and I don't think any local B&M stores carry them. I will have to get one from Amazon.ca or online if this works out.

My wireless does have an alarm for set meat temperature, so I can set it to 160F or so and decide if I drag my butt out of bed to wrap it.

Hi folks,

The pulled pork turned out fine. Thanks to all the advice. I ended up with 2 bone-in butts weighing 10.5lbs total. I like freezing leftovers for quick meals later on, and it makes more efficient use of the charcoal to do 2 butts.

I had the basket 3/4 filled with a 3:1 mix of lump (Nature's best from Cdn Costco) and Royal Oak Briquets. I have a heavy duty aluminum foil pizza pan with holes punched through as a diffuser. I may punch a few more holes to get less diffuser effect as I go along. 15-20 RO briquettes in the chimney to start the basket. I start them on the side burner of our propane grill.

Butts dry rubbed early in the evening and then set in the fridge until it was time to start cooking. I also tied them with some kitchen twine to get more of a cube shape. Started fire at about 11pm, and put the meat on at midnight. watched the uds temp remotely with the ip webcam app for android and my tablet while playing xbox in the basement with some online friends.

Went to sleep at about 130am with the temp about 240F. Set the alarm to go off in 2hrs and found the temp around 225F IIRC, I opened up a valve about 25% to get the temp to come up more. Definitely going to invest in a better setup. Maverick ET-733 peaks my interest.

Woke up for the morning around 7am, with the temp of the butt stalled out around 153F, raised the temp of the UDS to closer to 275F and foiled the 2 butts. Foiling seems to trap a lot of liquid in with the butt, and makes the bark a little soft. I am glad I did foil though as the butts were done about 930am, and took the butts off at 205F, and they rested for 3 hrs before being pulled. Internal temp 3hrs later was still 185+F.

(After foiling, I also put some garlic pork breakfast sausage on the smoker to have ready for 830- 9am for breakfast. Didn't turn out so well. The skin on the sausage turned tough, and the meat tasted like ham... interesting experiment though....)

Pork tasted fine, but I think I do like bark. Foiling did soften the bark quite a bit, or maybe it was from resting so long in the cooler. Kids and wife didn't complain, so I'm not too worried.

I think if I was picky, I could foil for the stall and remove the foil afterwards... maybe when I hit the stall, foil for 'X' hours or until the IT rises 15F?, would only work if I was willing to babysit the butt.

Peter