Thanks again for your advice. I did a bunch of research and appreciate you persuading me to do two smokes. I wound up doing two 10ish-lb briskets and two 8lb pork butts. Here's what I did:
1. Trimmed brisket. Made a pepper-salt mixture and rubbed them down. Wrapped it in aluminum foil and tossed it in the refrigerator.
1. Followed Alton Brown's pork butt recipe - trimmed, tied, and brined them in salt and molasses. Rubbed down the pork at 3:30am on Friday morning. Got them in the smoker with just over 7oz of apple wood at 220. Went to work like a zombie.
2. Got out early on Friday and got home. The two butts were cooking unevenly, so I swapped levels, moved them both up a bit, put in a pan of apple juice in the bottom level, closest to the burner. I upped the temp to 240 or so. The cooking seemed to even out a lot and the pork looked happier. Got the pork butts out and rested them at about 6pm on Friday night. I wound up pulling them then and putting into two large-double layer ziploc bags, which I put in the fridge.
3. Inspected the brisket. The surface looked uniformly dry and the grain had opened up a bit.
3. Let the smoker cool off and swapped out grill grates. Replaced aluminum foil, emptied drippings pan. Wiped out pork-laden stuff.
4. Loaded the smoker with about 8 oz of a mixture of hickory. I went with chunks of hickory and chips of alder. While it was mostly hickory, I wanted a few woods with different characteristics and sizes. Probably sacrilegious, but I figured I'd get an interesting flavor profile and different smoke rates before it got too hot.
5. I sprayed the grates with a high-temp baking spray and loaded them on two levels in a cross pattern. Let it go for awhile. After about 8 hours, I checked the temps and spritzed with an apple-y (cider and apple juice) spritz.
6. They went a lot faster than I anticipated and needed to be swapped.
7. I wrapped them in HD foil at about 150-160 with a healthy spritzing.
8. Once they were at 190ish, I transferred them to a cooler with some old heavy duty cotton bath mats. I let them rest for about 1-2 hours.
9. At about 1pm, I brought a mixture of apple juice, butter, and a scant bit of spice rub to boil. I loaded a crock pot with the first bit of pulled pork and mixed it with the mixture. It warmed up fairly evenly and maintained the bark.
The brisket looked perfect, but it was 2pm. I kept the wrapped brisket in a 170 degree oven, mowed the lawn, set up picnic tables, weeded….
At about 3:30, I made a mixture of the rub (salt & pepper), a slight bit of dr. pepper and water, which I brought to a boil and loaded in a crock pot set to warm. I made a little platform out of aluminum foil to keep the meat out of the liquid. The brisket was perfect. I sliced one brisket and put it into the crock. It passed the test where a strip can support its own weight but separates with a slight tug.
My yields were very good and the meat was a grand success. We had about 40 people (some KC & NC BBQ folks) and a ton of kids. I had to make some decisions that might make purists gasp, but we also had to make food to accommodate the vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, no-dairy, crowd. The party was an overwhelming success - no leftovers though
