The aluminum pan acts as a diffuser too. More so if there was water in it. Majority of my butts were done on a offset so the hot spot wasn’t much of a issue. I’m slowly figuring out the pellet grill on how it performs as in hot spots.
I never thought about the drip pan acting as a diffuser, that's a good point. I guess I have 2 layers protecting the meat. I'm always learning too, I have that alluminum pan to help with cleanup and a separate water pan in there. I should just put water in the alluminum one.
Yeah the only down side with having the pan with water under the pork is discarding the grease water. When I do it that way I kinda let the water evaporate as much as I can and usually I’ll have some jars laying around and dump it in that then throw it out. I don’t like dumping that stuff down the sink and I can’t really dump it in the back yard because the dog will be over there licking the ground for awhile lol.
It ended up taking 14.5 hours at 250 unwrapped. I actually liked the final product more than wrapping. The fat cap was rendered nicely and was a great addition to the pulled pork.
I probably should use foil more often to save some clean up. Looks like you caught a good bit there.
in the local mountains, so I have been skiing 
with my daughters for the last three weekends and no time to BBQ.
Forgot to post yesterday.
