BDAABAT, if your question is based upon your recent butt cooks that you chronicled for us here, mopping or not mopping is not the issue. In both cooks, the case is that you did not get the meat to the proper temperature point to have a moist pork product. Mopping would not make a difference.
There is actually no scientific reason that mopping would make a difference after the first couple of hours of cooking until the point where the roast is removed from the oven due to the contraction of the surface proteins preventing the infiltration of the liquid into the roast. Once you have denatured the proteins sufficiently, which you have not, the liquid can soak it. However, you will just as easily achieve the same ends, at that point, by putting some thinned sauce on the meat.
Moisture in a pulled pork is the result of rendering the collagen and denaturing some of the protein in the meat. This causes a form of moisture to dissipate into the meat fibers. This is also only going to occur once you get the meat through the stall and to the point where it is pull tender. I am of the belief that you have not gotten there yet. Also, every time you open your cooker to mop, you are creating an unstable fire and temperature environment, depending on the cooker you are using. This actually make it harder to maintain an consistent temperature and adds a lot of time to the cook.
Now if you have a large offset, or huge direct fire pit, then opening and closing the pit is less of an issue, but, where most of us use small cookers, opening and closing the cooker can add a lot of time. A UDS that suffers a drop of 10 degrees can take 20 minutes or more to come back to a stable temperature. Further, by opening the lid, you are allowing moisture in the cooking environment to escape and creating a dryer air condition in your cooker. This actually can cause an even greater evaporation of the surface moisture that can have a negative effect on your meat.
There is actually no scientific reason that mopping would make a difference after the first couple of hours of cooking until the point where the roast is removed from the oven due to the contraction of the surface proteins preventing the infiltration of the liquid into the roast. Once you have denatured the proteins sufficiently, which you have not, the liquid can soak it. However, you will just as easily achieve the same ends, at that point, by putting some thinned sauce on the meat.
Moisture in a pulled pork is the result of rendering the collagen and denaturing some of the protein in the meat. This causes a form of moisture to dissipate into the meat fibers. This is also only going to occur once you get the meat through the stall and to the point where it is pull tender. I am of the belief that you have not gotten there yet. Also, every time you open your cooker to mop, you are creating an unstable fire and temperature environment, depending on the cooker you are using. This actually make it harder to maintain an consistent temperature and adds a lot of time to the cook.
Now if you have a large offset, or huge direct fire pit, then opening and closing the pit is less of an issue, but, where most of us use small cookers, opening and closing the cooker can add a lot of time. A UDS that suffers a drop of 10 degrees can take 20 minutes or more to come back to a stable temperature. Further, by opening the lid, you are allowing moisture in the cooking environment to escape and creating a dryer air condition in your cooker. This actually can cause an even greater evaporation of the surface moisture that can have a negative effect on your meat.
