First overnight smoke

[jdefran]

Smoking a butt for my father in laws 65th birthday celebration. I've never done an overnight cook so feeling rather anxious. Got the temp climbing and about to ease back the vents to stabilize temp..plan to get up in 6 hours to check. Wish me luck!

[MartyG]

Hows it going so far? (Oh, and good luck BTW) Might do an overnighter myself tonight, but the butt I have is a small one, so I may not need the lead time . (But the butt?  ) Woke up to snow again this morning here in PA. It's nearly April for Gods sake!

[jdefran]

Aw man, definitely not as planned. I was looking over my temps through the night (igrill) and at some point it reached 400 (which could have been due to my thermo place with respect to the snake). I did however have a heat shield of foil wrapped the meat to try and block heat from the snake as it burned through. It's not jerky by any means but won't know how moist it is until pulling later. I plan to warm in a crockpot with sauce around 6 this evening.

One potential troubleshoot was the spacing of my charcoal. I had them stacked upon each other at a 45 deg angle, I think at some point I should have flattened them out to let the backend of the snake fade out as it progressed.

Later today I'll be smoking a chuck roast for faux burnt ends will employ my troubleshooting measure about and watch it closely.

[CharliefromLI]

@jdefran I think the angled charcoal was your issue. The angle stacked them closer too much coal lit too quickly.

Lesson learned. Good news is butts are fairly forgiving and the only one one I ever really messed up was from under cooking not over.

See how it pulls. I bet the inside wol be fine. The outside might need a little work. If so, you can chip and sauce the overdone bits or chuck em and just serve the interior. If it's salvageable try to keep the exterior as the bark is the best flavor

[1buckie]

Aw man, definitely not as planned. I was looking over my temps through the night (igrill) and at some point it reached 400 (which could have been due to my thermo place with respect to the snake). I did however have a heat shield of foil wrapped the meat to try and block heat from the snake as it burned through. It's not jerky by any means but won't know how moist it is until pulling later. I plan to warm in a crockpot with sauce around 6 this evening.

One potential troubleshoot was the spacing of my charcoal. I had them stacked upon each other at a 45 deg angle, I think at some point I should have flattened them out to let the backend of the snake fade out as it progressed.

Later today I'll be smoking a chuck roast for faux burnt ends will employ my troubleshooting measure about and watch it closely.

"It's not jerky by any means but won't know how moist it is until pulling later."

If you had a therm in there, where did it end?
might still be underdone?
The last one I did went way up, popping & sizzling in the drip pan in the middle of the night (dawgs woke me up when that happened) & I just wrapped so it wouldn't get overly burnt on the outside....







If it is in fact not all the way rendered, then just stick it back on for some time while the chuck is going.....
Last chuck I did, that's what happened there too.....not enough time in the heat, so I sliced some off, opened the vents back up & set it back on....





Roll with it.....you'll do fine ...........

[Jammato]

take notes of everything, then when you change something you will know what was different. after a while you will be able to tell what is effecting the cook.
charcoal
vents
setup
everything makes the cook change as such as the weather.
good luck