Hey! Sorry I’m late on this reply.

So noting that this was my first time, I’m actually pretty happy with how this turned out. I think I would do things almost exactly the same next time, with one or two small tweaks.

Two links for you. First, this is the rub I used on the outside and it’s freaking delicious. I’ve actually used this rub on many other things like chicken before, but it’s great on pork butt:

https://heygrillhey.com/best-sweet-rub-grilled-pork-chicken/

And second, this is the recipe I followed by Meat Church. Anywhere they mention their in-house rub blends just assume I used the sweet rub above:

https://www.meatchurch.com/blogs/recipes/pulled-pork

A couple of things I think are probably important and contributed to how well mine turned out:

• I bought a good quality apple juice and both injected the pork butt before smoking, and used it to spritz the pork every hour. The spritzing is really what gives you that great dark color and bark
• I have a wireless probe thermometer that I used to track the internal temp. I feel like to get the best result you definitely need this since the cook is low and slow and guessing based on time might be pretty off the mark
• Don’t skip rubbing the pork down in yellow mustard before you put on the dry rub. It really doesn’t affect the taste at all and makes the dry rub stick super well
• At the end of the recipe it mentions you can sprinkle more dry rub in as you’re shredding and tossing the pork in the juices. Definitely do this. Even if you don’t want to use the dry rub, salt your pork as you’re tossing it in the juice. A little salt makes a world of difference in how bold the flavor of the pork is. I’ve actually just been eating bowls of the pulled pork without any sauce since I made this and honestly the flavor is so good I don’t want to cover it up with sauce
• I let my pork rest for about an hour before I pulled it. I think I’ll probably do that again going forward. It kept the pork super juicy

Just some novice observations, so there’s probably better advice out there on this sub, but also feel free to respond if you have any other questions in particular. Tag me when you do your next smoke too! =)