Well I had six 8-9 lb butts in there. Three on each grate so it was crowded in there. Also I started a small minion fire and let the drum come up to temp with the meat in it so now that I think about it, it was probably 2-3 hours before the lid temp reached 225. When we foiled them at about 6:00 am they were all around 170* internal. It only took another couple of hours to finish them foiled in higher heat.
We just did it this way because it was the best way we had of getting a good end product with as little attention as possible because we were really trying to focus on ribs and chicken for the judges.