View source for Smoked Pork Butt

==Smoking==
My Boston Butt hunk O' pork, that is. Today I started using my Brinkmann water smoker. Let's talk about what I did over the last few days.

I took my butt and stuck it in a bowl. I soaked my butt in a mixture of 1/3 cider vinegar, 2/3 water, enough salt to saturate the solution, and 2 TBSP of ground black pepper. My butt sat in that for 1.5 days. When it came out, it looked a little odd, but then I rubbed it heavily with a BBQ spice rub. Nothing special in the rub exactly.

I then tried to figure out how to work my smoker. I wanted to smoke my butt RIGHT. I filled the charcoal tray about 1/2 full of lump charcoal. I set hunks of water soaked oak (from my firewood pile) on top of the lump charcoal.

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I filled my charcoal chimney starter with Kingsford to the top and let it burn until it was all burning like mad. I then spread the blazing coals on top of the lump charcoal and added a few hunks of water soaked Hickory.

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I filled the water pan with, water. I then set my butt on the top smoking grate and inserted my remote probe thermometer.

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I assembled the whole smoker and let it sit and smoke my butt.

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I smoked my butt for 6 hours and it had heated up to 175 degrees. The guide I read said it should take at least 8 hours to smoke my butt properly to 195 degrees. I set the top back on and let it smoke more more to get to the proper temp.

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Here's my notes about butt smoking thus far. The Brinkman smoker has exactly zero adjustments for airflow. You get a perforated base in the charcoal pan and a gap around the top lid. That's it in terms of airflow. Fire management becomes more of a challenge. At first, it burned too hot. I wet down the coals with water and dropped the temp to where it should be for smoking. After that, I dicked around with the fire every 2 hours to toss in a few more hunks of lump charcoal, some more oak wood, and to stir the coals to get the fire working properly.