I know of one that cooks pork loin in an oven, does not even have a smoker on the premises, chops it to almost hamburger with a buffalo chopper and people go crazy over it.
That's an abomination! I don't even know if you should speak of this, it's the Voldemort of BBQ!
As long as the guys not calling it BBQ pulled pork, fine. But it is puzzling what some folks consider good BBQ. :doh:
They do and they have been in business for over 30 years. I do believe when the founder ran it that they served real deal BBQ but now with children running it they don't but people still like it. Go figure.
Cookshack now makes a piece to hold the extra wood chunk for additional smoke in a FEC100. Simple bolt on, no drilling or cutting required. When I got mine a few months ago, it was so new that it did not even have a part number yet. Call sales or customer service.
I catered my first wedding with this cooker this past Saturday and everything went well.
So I figure another update was in order. As you can see maybe from my post time I am up at 5:30am as I was also at 4am and 5am. Why am I up? Because I have a time line that puts some butts needing to be done this morning between 4-7am and one of the big selling points for me on the FEC was the meat probe that could shut the unit down to hot hold when the butts reach the temps that I want. As of this posting date I am still waiting on a new processor from CookShack to fix the inaccurate meat probe issues that they have with this unit. It's been 3 1/2 months and when I called them the other day they said that they were still working on it and did not have a release date as of now. All I could read about CookShack when II researched buying this unit was how fast and efficient the made repairs/shipped parts and things of that nature. I bought this unit 100% so I could get sleep and here I am up just as much as with my Lang and I am not getting the sleep I spent $5k for. Can ya tell I'm a little P!$$ed?
On a side note I have noticed that 7.5-8lb butts take anywhere from 14-16 hours to reach 195* in this unit at 225 degrees. When I inquired about this to CookShack thinking that maybe the food chamber probe accuracy was a little off as well I was a little shocked when they told me that it is standard for them to see 14-16 hours cook time on a 7.5lb butt. When I questioned them about it as to why they proceeded to tell me about the plateau effect of meats yada yada yada. I told them I am not a newbie but every other cooker I have will cook a 7.5lb butt to 195* in 12 hours at 225 every time. While I have not taken the time to check with accuracy with another probe which I will do it sometime, I was just shocked when they said it was normal. I see this time period whether I have 2 butts on it or 10. I will just bump temps up some to find a 12 hour cook time.
Another side not is that if you stay awake at night and don't mind cooking longer hours the FEC120 will cook excellent pork, chicken and ribs. As for brisket it's good but nowhere near what a stick burner will do and I still have not figured out why it does so well on the other meats but not so much on brisket. It's not bad, just not near as good.
When I bought the unit all info said it burns 0.5lb of pellets per hour at 250 degrees. CookShack and since updated their info to say 1.5lbs of pellet per hour at 250 degrees. Seems they were off by 66% on their pellet amounts. I am seeing around 1lb per hour at 225 degrees. I have been recently using the BBQ Delight Pellets and they are way better than others I have tried. All in all my happiness with this unit rests 95% on CookShack getting the issues fixed with the meat probe. SO if you're in the market for one of these units I'd ask them if it has been corrected before I bought one. I'll post here as soon as I have it corrected as well.
To be honest, I never hear of anyone complaining about the probe, but I think that's just because nobody really uses it, myself included. Now, that isn't an excuse, it should work properly.
As far as your pork cooks, I am doing big loads of ibp butts around 9 lbs each at 250 degrees for 12 hours. Maybe try bumping your temps a bit. You can't always take an exact workflow from one cooker and transfer that directly to another cooker.
I was told there was a bad batch of processors causing the probe issues. I plan to do as you say on the times and thanks I'll try 250* next cook to see is that gets me to 12 hours. I am just scratching my head as to why they are not done at 225* in 12 hours as they would be on all other pits that I have and have ever cooked on.