Pulled pork cook time in a UDS

I am going to be smoking 6 butts of pulled pork this weekend for a party and I need some advice.

I have one UDS with 2 racks in it. I think I can fit all 6 in there at once depending on the size of the butts that I get. How will that affect the cooking time doing all 6 at once? It might be a bit crowded.

Should I do 3 butts in two separate smokes, would that be better?

I need to have it ready to serve at noon on sunday and I want to try and wait as long as possible to pull the pork so that it is fresh for serving. If I smoke them all at one time, I was thinking of starting around midnight saturday night...but I am not sure if that is enough time for 6 butts. Last time I did 2 butts and it was around 9 hours.

Or I could do 3 on saturday afternoon and 3 more early sunday morning.

What advice can you give me?
Thanks

big brother smoke said:

I have done six butts in the UDS sometimes overnight (7-8lbs. per). They are never done by morning. Meaning that it will extend your cook considerably if you are using a deflector for sure.

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How long would you say it extends the cooktime? 2-3 hours? more? I just want to make sure I don't start too late and the meat is not ready for service.

I just did 4 pork butts on my new UDS and kept cooking log notes every 1/2 hour or so. I put them on at 10pm with the UDS running at 269 deg. on the maverick thermometer. I cooked them overnight and the average temp. was 225 deg. until morning when I upped the temp. to 318 deg. and wrapped them at 9:15 am when I was getting concerned that they would not be done when I had to leave for a vending job. I pulled them at 11:45 and they were at 196 deg. and could not wait any longer. They were almost pullable and ok for vending. It looks like that between 10:30 and 5:30 the temp drop to 225 was enough to throw off my estimated times. I will be getting a Stoker so that I can sleep and still keep the temp. up to 275 deg. BTY, the breeze came up during the night and outside temp. dropped so that is probably why the cooker temp. dropped from 265 to 225 when I hit the sack.