The time had come to do an overnight cook of pork butts to make pulled pork. I followed similar steps to what is listed in www.virtualweberbullet.com. I used the minion method for fuel, a McCormick Pork Rub, and apple juice for basting.

It was awesome.

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Two pork butts cryovac sealed from a wholesaler place.

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One of the butts getting ready to be trimmed. Notice the huge fat cap on top.

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With a sharp knife trimming off the fat was easy. Other external fat was removed as well.

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Not sure how much fat I took off exactly, but it probably weighed about 2 pounds total.

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Put the rub on and placed in plastic wrap for an overnight sit.

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I used the new Kingsford briquettes.
An entire bag when all was said and done.

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In the charcoal pan I poured a layer of briquettes,
then put a layer of apple wood chips over them.

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I finished it up with another layer of briquettes, probably could have fit more.

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Started a chimney full of charcoal. The new briquettes light up fast!

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Put on another helping of rub onto the butts prior to placing them in the smoker.

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Put the slightly larger one on top, since it would cook faster.

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The typical smoker setup, complete with remote read thermometer.
Also added two hickory chunks.

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After 12 hours of cooking with no intervention on my part,
this is how they looked.

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After 17 hours of cooking, they barely stayed on the bone.

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Wrapped and resting in a cooler for an hour or so,
it fell apart even further.

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Pulling apart with two forks was easy.

The smoker kept the temperature quite nicely throughout the cooking session. By 6am the cooker had gone down to 200 degrees. Stirring the coals didn't help that much so I decided to add a chimney full of lit coals to the fire at 7am. I was running out of time and needed to speed up the cooking process, so I decided to keep the cooker in the 270-280 range for the remainder of the time. I got even more nervous and decided to forgo a beautiful bark and wrap the pork butts in foil for two hours to speed up cooking.

The bark itself wasn't too bad in texture/depth, but I wasn't thrilled with the tastiness of it. Other people said the bark was really good but I didn't think so. I'll try a different (home-made) rub next time, and perhaps try the mustard smearing method too. And of course not use the foil.

The meat itself was tender and moist, I was barely able to keep it together when handling it. I found using two forks to pull the pork was very easy and I was able to pull an entire butt in under 10 minutes. I sprinkled some more rub into the pulled pork to give it some more flavor. If you check the picture above you can see a nice pink smoke ring. I served it with Cattlemen's Classic sauce right out of the bottle. The meat was not oily at all which I've heard sometimes happens to pulled pork (maybe if it sits around for a while after pulling?).

A couple things I will try to do better next time:

• Keep up with the water pan more (it went dry for a couple hours I think).
• And swap the top/bottom racks a little sooner than I did (the top cooked faster than the bottom).
• Inject some flavor into the pork, but need to do some more research on it.