I had already ordered the slow n sear prior to reading the last few messages so I just tried using it to do a pork butt. I got a 7lb bone-in. I cut it in half per the instructions. It wasn't specific so I assumed splitting it down its longest edge to reduce thickness.
I didn't have a drip pan so I just foiled up the whole bottom under the pork. I figure this will redirect more air toward the charcoal anyways.
I didn't have the starter cubes so I just used a chimney starter and then place the 12 briquettes in. I then added charcoal and 3 wood chunks. I couldn't fit an entire fullsize chimney starter, I could only fit about 75 more with the wood. A full size chimney starter seems to be able to fit about 100 bruquettes. I guess my kettle is leaky because with all the vents closed, except the top vent cracked open so my temp sensor wires could come out, the temp kept going up settling near 280F. Using some binder clips, I was able to seal it better and get it down to around 250. Around this time, I noticed my probe clip had come loose from the grill so who knows what the real temp was. I had to open it up to fix that. After that it was still settling around 250. When the meat go up to around 180, it seemed like it was in the stall so I wrapped it up. But then it actually went up to 190 and stayed there for quite some time. Around the late afternoon, there was no longer direct sunlight on the bbq and I noticed the temp dropped about 25F. After a while, it seemed like the meat temp was starting to drop. I opened it up to take a look, ended up adding some charcoal and relighting the jack up the temp. Overall it took about 10hrs, charcoal lasting about 9hrs. I'm not sure how much cutting it in half really helped.
I think next time should go more smoothly now that I have a better idea of the vents. I think I can maintain like 250 +/- 25F pretty easily without adjusting too much. I don't know about 225, maybe if its a cold day or no sun.
Here's a graph of my temps:
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