First thing first, get the rub on the meat! For this I decided to use McCaffrey’s Spicey Brown Mustard instead of plain ole French’s Yellow Mustard. I applied about a table spoon to each side and coated it with a nice film of mustard. I than took the second jar of the Grill Mates rub and applied about half of it to each side (~1/4 cup per side). I let that sit for about an hour and fifteen minutes to get it up to room temperature. While that was getting up to room temp I got my smoker going. I don’t have anything fancy and don’t believe you need it. My smoker is a cheap $120 Brinkmann (similar to this one), nothing fancy but a good starter.
I let the smoker get up to ~300°F with lump brickettes to start followed up by apple wood. I always, and I cannot stress this enough, place a pan of some liquid in the smoker. This helps keep the moister in and prevents the meat from drying out. In this case I used apple juice, for chicken I use plain water.
I started smoking this at about 10:30 am.
(Yes, that is snow behind the smoker)
Here is a gorgeous pic at 2 hours in. Once an hour from this point on I added a chunk of hickory wood to the smoker box. This really added a nice flavor to the apple wood.
I applied the mop sauce from Smoked Pork Shoulder – Day 1 fairly liberally, enough for the sauce to drip down to the bottom of the barrel on all five sides.
Even better pic at 3 hours in!
I finally pulled the meat off at about 5:00 pm, wrapped it up and placed it back on the smoker for another hour. About 6:00 pm I pulled it off for good. We took it inside and started shredding it just to find out it need more time. Now this is a 6.5 lb shoulder blade that I smoked for about 7 hours. With this piece I had the shoulder blade on the opposite end away from the smoker box. This I believe was my mistake. We ended up placing it in the oven, fully wrapped still for another hour at 415°F for another hour. This is what brought the core temp up to the 195°F we were looking for!
Finally time to shred it up!
Sorry, no full dinner plate pic because we ate all the damn fries before the meat was ready ;-p !