Well, its the morning after. If you saw my twitter stream, you'll know that things did not go as planned. Instead of taking 4-6 hours to reach 190 degrees, it took about 10 hours to get to 180. Ultimately the pulled pork tastes quite good, so that, at least was successful. I also had problems getting the smoke generated properly. I checked the smoke box after the cooking was over and I got less that half the wood smoldering. So my plan is to try and deduce what went wrong. Of course I only have the one data point, so most of this is based on other experiences.
First, the smoke. I think the smoke box did not start smoldering because I should have put it on earlier, when I was heating the barbecue, not once I had stabilied the temperature. The fire was not high enough at that point to start the wood smoking. If it was already smoking, I think it would have maintained generating the smoke, but it was too cold to start the fire.
Second. The time. The meat was still cold when it when on the bbq. If you check the initial temperature when I put the meat on the bbq, it was still basically at fridge temperature in the center. It took almost a full hour on the heat before the internal temperature was up to room temp. Given that it only took an hour to get the internal temp to room temp, I'm not sure if that fully explains why it took basically twice the expected time to get to final temp. Of course heat transfer is a complex process, so who knows.
Anyway, the recipe for the rub made more that I used for this experiment so I figure I should do another in a few weeks.
Another important note, running the bbq for 10 hours at lowest heat used about 1/4 of a tank of propane.
Here are photos of the meat, almost every hour (I missed a few).
Just starting 12 pm
1 pm.
2 pm.
3 pm.
4pm
6pm
7pm
8pm
9pm
10pm
12pm. Post pulling.