I tweaked my rub just a little, but the biggest change was after the butts came up to the usual 190* in the smoker, I double wrapped them in foil and put them in a cooler for a while. In the past when cooking like this, I would just hold the butts in the cooker at a low temp (around 140* to keep them out of the "danger zone"), and then I would start pulling about an hour before service time.
This time I pulled them off the smoker and wrapped at 4am, grabbed a couple of hours sleep, then packed up my rig and headed up to the location we would be serving at. I re-fired the smoker and let it come back up to temperature while I set up the tables, etc., and then about an hour before service, we took the meat out of the coolers and pulled it into pans and placed them in the smoker at around 140* until service.
I have not really ever had a problem with my product "drying out" in the past, but I definately felt the meat tasted more moist this time. The other benefit was that I actually was able to get started earlier, therefore finished earlier, and was able to get at least a couple of hours sleep.
If I hadn't of had so much fun sitting up with Graffiti and F100Jeff eating the awesome steaks Graffiti brought, smoking great cigars and drinking quality adult beverages, I probably could have finished up a couple of hours earlier and gotten even more sleep
