Smoked Pork Butt: The Dos Equis Amber Epiphany Edition

Preliminary steps:

1. Go buy a Big Green Egg or something else that would allow you to smoke meat. When you buy a Big Green Egg, you unofficially join a cult. There's no ritual suicide; however, there is plenty of delicious food which makes it just shy of being as cool as joining The Cult.
2. Then read Chris Grove's thorough and technically informative article about smoking pork butts for pulled pork. It's a baseline education that I think every pork butt smoker should read.  I refer back to it every time I do butts *that's what she said*.

Pork butt prep:

1. Buy a butt with bone in and fat cap on. (NO SKIN!)
2. Apply your favorite rub on all sides.. I typically use Byron's Butt Rub, but opted for the Dinosaur Cajun Foreplay this time.

Smoker prep:

1. Clean out the ash. Don't be lazy.
2. Add your natural lump charcoal in layers with lots of apple wood sandwiched in between.  I manage about three layers of charcoal in the fire bowl with about four or five decent sized chunks of apple at every level.
3. Place three Weber Firestarter Lighter Cubes in an evenly spaced triangle as deep as you can still reach with one of those long lighters.
4. Light the fire and wait for the cubes to completely burn off.
5. Close the dome with all the vents wide open.
6. When the dome temp hits 200, put the platesetter in, legs up.
7. Place your drip pan on the platesetter and add two bottles of Dos Equis Amber.
8. Place grate on top of the platesetter

Smoking:

1. Place butt on grate. I like the idea of a self-basting pork butt, so I put it on fat cap facing up. Others will tell you to use the fat cap as a heat shield and place it face down. Chris Grove, on the other hand just trims the fat cap off entirely to get a better bark.
2. Futz with vents until you get the temperature stable at 250.
3. Plan on 1.5 hours of smoking at 250 for every pound of pork butt.
4. Half way through, adjust coal and add applewood chunks as necessary. (I tossed in another half dozen chunks.)
5. I suspect your drip pan is starting to boil down, so while you're in there add two more bottles of Dos Equis.
6. Close it back up and re-stabilize the dome temp at 250.
7. When the internal temp hits 195, it's time to remove the butt.
8. Wrap in tinfoil for an hour and then you're ready to pull that pork.

Tips:

1. My last pork butt was 9.5 lbs and took me 12 hours to smoke.
2. I really like my meat claws for handling the meat and shredding.
3. When you have the claws out, you will inevitably walk around for at least 3o seconds making Wolverine *SNIKT!* sound effects.
4. Keep an eye on the moisture level. The four bottles of Dos Equis worked perfect for me this time.  The meat was super tender, but there was still a nice bark on the outside.
5. I'm pretty heavy-handed when it comes to smoking wood.  I ended up using at least 15 chunks of apple wood.
6. If I'm feeling ambitious next time, I may try to turn the pan drippings into a gravy. I imagine that I could deglaze the pan with a little more beer.  And there must be plenty of flavor what with the pork fat, beer, and spice.  Add some flour and turn it into a nice roux? Tell me that doesn't sound nice!