What temperature is the pork butt stall?

Pork reaches the stall near 150°F. This site plots it at about one third of the 225°F slow cook. On a 5 pound butt that is around 4 hours in, because the unwrapped cook is about 12 hours at the slow end. It is a planning mark, not a buzzer.

Is it the same stall as brisket?

Same cause, different piece of meat. Evaporation cools the surface while the pit heats it. A brisket usually sits in a wider band, about 150 to 170°F. A butt tends to show it near 150°F. The fire is often fine in both cases.

Does wrapping skip the stall?

A tight foil wrap around 150 to 160°F stops most of the evaporative cooling and can cut about two hours off the cook in this plan. The bark will be softer. Paper is the middle choice.

Pork butt stall | SimpleFood365

A pork butt stalls near 150°F because water evaporating off the surface cools the meat as fast as a 225°F pit can heat it. The graph goes flat, and it feels like something broke. The shoulder is still cooking, and the fire is usually fine. Wrapping ends that balance by stopping the evaporation. Leaving it open keeps a drier bark, and it also keeps you there for a longer afternoon.

Where the mark comes from

The cook plan plots the stall at one third of the slow 225°F cook, then shortens that mark if you run a hotter pit. A 5 pound butt is listed at 10 to 12 hours unwrapped at 225°F, so the stall sits around 4 hours. A 7 pound butt is scheduled around 10 and a half hours, and the stall scales with that window. The fraction is borrowed from the brisket timetable, where a stall shows up at 6 hours of a long unwrapped cook. It is a planning assumption, written out in the pork butt smoking time calculator, not a separate laboratory clock for pork.

The bone lies. A probe touching bone reads hot and makes a stall look finished, or makes a finished butt look stalled, depending on the hole. Put the probe in thick meat. If you do not trust the leave-in, the buying notes are meat thermometers for smoking.

Wait or wrap

Pros

Waiting keeps the surface drying, so the paprika bark from the pork butt rub stays firmer.
You do not have to touch a hot pit just because the number paused.

Cons

The pause can eat the slack in a 10 to 12 hour plan if you started late.
A foil wrap that ends the stall also softens the crust. That is the trade.

Wrap in a tight foil packet around 150 to 160°F, once the color is set, and this plan takes about two hours off both ends of the window. The moment to do that is when to wrap pork butt. If you would rather keep the bark, use pink paper or do not wrap. The texture difference is butcher paper vs foil.

The rub you are protecting is the pork butt rub. The brisket version of this same evaporative pause is the brisket stall. Done is still later, around 203°F and a bone that moves, on internal temp for pulled pork. A blank phone at hour four is often the radio, not the stall. Meater not connecting is the checklist.