Pork Shoulder and Brine

[powrsmoker]

I picked up 2 pork shoulders and did them up today for about 10 hrs.  5 hrs of smoke and then foiled them up for the remainder of the time.  I decided to try brining one of the shoulders the night before.   That one seemed to turn out real nice.  Unfortunately the other shoulder seemed quite a bit tougher.  The meat didn't pull apart as easily.  Does the brining process also help in tenderizing the meat or break down some of the protein?  I didn't notice a huge difference in flavour, I just used salt. 

[Habanero Smoker]

Salt does denature the protein a little, but exposing the protein to temperature of 140°F - 180°F will denature protein.

With out knowing the internal temperature of both butts or how they were cooked; it is difficult to say what may have happened. Brining often shortens the cooking time, so it could be that the brined butt could have been in the zone where collagen breaks done, longer then the unbrined butt. Not all muscle is the same, so you can get one butt that is way tougher the the other. If you didn't rotate, this can cause one to cook faster then the other, because the smoker has hot spots.

[powrsmoker]

I didn't want to open up the smoker too much during the first 5 hrs so I only rotated once at the 5 hr mark, the brined shoulder was on the bottom rack so it had a bit more exposure to direct heat.  Next time I will try brining both shoulders and see what happens.  I had it around the 180-200 mark on average based on the door thermometer. 

[Tenpoint5]

What habs was talking about was the Internal Temperature of your meat. When you said that you cooked them for 10 hours it raised a red flag for me as well about the same thing. Butts and shoulders usually take 12-14 hours for me, I have seen some butts take 22 hours. Butts and shoulders both do the same thing, somewhere around 160-170º IT. The temp will stall may even drop some. This is when the magic is happening. The collagen that holds the meat fibers together is changing into gelatin during this time period. Once it has completed the changeover the IT will start to climb again you should let the IT get up to somewhere in the neighborhood of 195-205º.  The meat should then be at a point that it will almost fall apart on its own and you won't have any toughness issues.