How to cook NINE pork butts on Ironwood 885

[talbertford]

I’m going to be attempting to cook nine, roughly 8 pound, pork butts on my Traeger Ironwood 885 this weekend. Is there anything that I need to take into consideration that differs significantly from cooking just one pork butt? I’m planning on starting them at 225° with super smoke on and then when they reach internal temperature of around 160-165° I’ll pull them, wrap them in foil and return to the grill at 275° until they reach about 201° internal temperature. Will the fact that I’m doing nine butts at once result in making the cook take longer? Basically looking for anyone who can share experience in cooking this volume of pork butts versus just one or two. Also, I anticipate quite a bit of grease so I’m wondering if it would hurt anything to put some aluminum pans down below the bottom great to catch some of it rather than have it all drip down and into the grease bucket? thanks.

 

[Slimpicker]

9 butts in a smoker is like 1 butt and a bag of ice. Yes by virtue of the fact that 9 cold items are in your smoker it will take longer.
And you will lose a lot of TIME and heat if you wrap your butts... Butts don't need to be wrapped until they come off at 200°ish. Wrap and rest for hours in a cooler.
You will have a lot more, and better tasting BARK if you cook straight thru, but to each his own.
I haven't wrapped a Butt during a smoke in 20 years, ribs are different.
I've done 8 4.5lb butts before in my UDS and each butt got done at different times which made removing and wrapping easy.

 

[GrillMeister]

In addition to what Slim said, I would rig up some kind of PVC pipe from the grease outlet to a much larger container than the bucket as you will have loads of fat coming from so many Boston Butts and it will be an overnight cook. I usually take 22 hours for smoking Boston Butt at 180 for 3 hours, then bumped to 225 for the rest and that's for 2 butts.