Been a while

[Peter_Caldwell]

Hey guys. It's been a little while. How are things? I've got two 8# butts. Dinner is at 5pm. What time would you put them on?

[Tom_Heath]

I hate to try and judge time but my best guess would be to have them in by at least 10 am.
The bad part is depending on the fatty tissue, you just never really know how long the stall will be.
Are you going to have snack stuff just in case the butts run long?

Another thought would be to put them in around 8 ish and keep them warm in a cooler or the oven on the lowest setting.
If you go the early route, make sure you wrap them really good to prevent them from drying out.

To keep things safe I usually wrap in several layers of foil and put a couple layers of towels in the cooler to set the butts on.
Then I stick a dig probe in the butt to monitor temps. If I start to get close to the 140 mark I will stick um in the oven or back on the smoker till there back up around 180.

I have easily gotten 4 hours out of a cooler for a hot box before.

[Peter_Caldwell]

I ended up putting them on at 7:30. Had near zero temperature change in the smoker all day. It ranged from 237-243 all day. I made one adjustment the whole time. Come 5 o'clock it was still about 25* short on the meat temp. Opened it up a little because I had some hungry people waiting and the snacks were running low. Let it sit in a cooler for about a half hour. It tasted great, but certainly didn't pull the easiest. Tastewise, I was very happy how it turned out.

[Tom_Heath]

WOW, I'm sure glad you didn't go by my first guess of 10:00
That would have been a disaster.

Glad to hear that it all worked out for ya.
Did the hungry folks give ya time to take pics?

[Peter_Caldwell]

After we ate, I remembered a picture was needed.

[Frank_Cox]

LOL aint that the way it always goes?