January 21, 2012 - Pulled Pork Shoulder

Intro:

Dan here.   Made some pulled pork sandwiches last night.   Getting better and better with pulled pork & the attendees advised me that this was the best yet.

Details:

Picked up a 9 lb Pork Shoulder at Safeway.   Injected it with Maraschino cherry sauce and Marinated it overnight in the 3 Little Pigs Kansas City Touch of Cherry BBQ Rub.

Put the Pork Shoulder on the Big Steel Keg with the Diffuser filled with Lump Charcoal and Cherry wood chips at about noon.   Smoked it at a steady 300 degrees for 6 hours which put it at about a 185 degree internal temp and then wrapped in foil with some apple cider vinegar - cooked it for about a half hour more up to 195 degrees internal temp and then let it sit for 30 minutes before Don used the Bear Claws to shred it - came apart very easily and he had it fully shredded in only a couple minutes.

Used the Aunt Hattie's BBQ Buns from Costco and applied a very small amount of Kansas City style BBQ sauce to only the top bun with a butter knife - very careful to avoid overwhelming the flavor of the meat as I've accidentally done in the past...

Everybody liked it - I think it was my best pulled pork yet!

Attendees:

Don

Nate
Hippie
Dan

Pictures:

January 9, 2012 - Apricot Saison Secondary Fermentation

Eventually, I will consolidate everything so I can have a single post for each batch which gives the brew, fermentation, and tasting results, but for now, here's an update on the Apricot Saison/Belgian Specialty Ale I started on January 2, 2012.

S.G. at secondary fermentation is now 1.008, which means with the 1.039, this beer is now 4.1% ABV. With the half gallon of added Apricot Juice, fermentation kicked back in, and you can see the bubbles here:

Secondary Fermentation Beginning Again

I figure that should add another .02%, so that the beer will be about 4.3% ABV when complete. Overall, I'm pretty happy with this batch. For my first all-grain, it has been a fun experience, and it actually tastes like "real" beer already! I revised my efficiency numbers, and it seems I got 51% efficiency from the mash, but the problem should be fixed with the next run. 

The secondary will run for 14 days at approximately 68 degrees F to finish out, then I will add the priming sugar, apricot extract for aroma, bottle, and condition for 1 month.

I already collected up 50 empty beer bottles from my stash, de-labeled them, cleaned them, and stored them for bottling later.

For now, this is what the brewery looks like:

The next batch is going to cook this weekend, and my wife and I will be making an Imperial Pumpkin Ale.

Here's the recipe: http://www.brewmasterswarehouse.com/recipe/58e215d2/chicken-mountain-brewers-scarecrow-jacks-pumpkin-ale

January 2, 2012 - All Grain Extravaganza!

Jake here in California...


With the completion of a 48-quart Mash Tun cooler conversion, my diabolical scheme to take over brewing the best homebrew in the Concord Valley has finally come to a head!


For some time now, I have been underwhelmed by the hit-and-miss of home brew extract beers. Some beers are disgustingly sweet and overly malty, while others are pretty decent. But as a rule, I have only met two or three home brewers who can make an extract beer I enjoy drinking in quantity, Dan being one of them. 


So, I tirelessly researched the all-grain process and started gathering the required equipment. I couldn't afford to buy my equipment from the brew store, so I built most of it from internet plans and YouTube videos.


Here is some of my equipment:

 My converted Spaten Munchen Keg Kettle

 The Keg Kettle on the Turkey Burner

The finished Counterflow Wort Chiller (worked AMAZINGLY well, down to 65 degrees)

The Mash Ten was an easy conversion. The cooler was a 48-quart Igloo Marine cooler for $24.95 at Wal-mart and about another $42.00 in parts from Home Depot finished it out for about $67.00 total. Here are some of the web pages I read to git-er-dun: 

http://www.brewingtechniques.com/library/backissues/issue5.4/palmer.html


Once I had the equipment built, I turned my attention to the beer. For starters, I decided to brew a Saison Fruit Clone. 


Here is the recipe:


Belgian Pilsner - 10 lbs, 4 oz
Clear Candi Sugar - 1 lbs, 0 oz @ 15 mins left
Briess White Wheat - 1 lbs, 0 oz
Aromatic - 0 lbs, 6 oz
Kent Goldings, UK Pellets - 1.05 oz @ 60 mins
Hallertau, German Pellets -  .4 oz @ 15 mins left
Coriander Seed - 2 oz. @ 60 mins
Brewer's Garden Paradise Seed - 1 oz. @ 60 mins
Sweet Orange Peel - 1 oz. @ 60 mins
Wyeast Labs Yeast, No. 3463 "Forbidden Fruit" - pitched at 70 degrees after chiller
2 quarts raspberry juice at secondary fermentation


The brew day lasted about 6 hours from start to clean-up, and I did an hour boil. The really interesting part was the Mashing, Lautering, and Sparging, since I had never done that alone, but it came out really well. I ran about 13 quarts of strike water at 152 degrees when I doughed in for about an hour, and then I sparged with about 5.5 gallons of sparge water at 170 degrees.  It took about 45 minutes to run through twice, and the liquor looked and smelled great.


I then returned the kettle to boil and threw in the spices and Kent Goldings for an hour boil.


The real interesting part was that I decided to use Belgian Candi Sugar (BCS), which is an invert sugar used to increase the S.G. without affecting the taste or mouthfeel of the beer. After seeing it on sale for $10/lb., I did as I always do and figured out how to make it myself at home.


Here's the video:

Mainline Brewers is awesome for it's Brewing Videos.

So I made a batch using their method, and it turn out well, but I decided to improve upon a good thing. I invented Saaz Hop Infused Belgian Candi Sugar. That's right, I made BCS with an oz. of Saaz Hops mixed in. An important note is that hops makes BCS foam like a mother, so you need a good pot and some patience to keep stirring, but the result is worth the trouble. Also, use wax paper, since you lose less BCS when you're cracking and you don't have little pieces of aluminum foil stuck in your sugar to worry about.

 The poured and chilled Saaz BCS ready to sugar.

 Sugaring the Saaz BCS for cracking.

1 pound of the finished product, bagged and ready to go.

Anyway, so all went well. The equipment worked, and sparging was actually fun. 

The beer is now fermenting away in the Ale Pail in my kitchen and seems to be going well.


I ran the calculations and found 1.040 O.G., which based on my grain bill, means I got about 57.6% efficiency from my Mash and Sparge. Not bad for a first All-Grain attempt. Here's the website: http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/gravity.html

More updates soon with pics and videos.

November 25, 2011 - Baby Back Ribs & T-Bone Steaks

Intro:

Dan here.   Made Baby Back Ribs & T-Bone steaks the day after Thanksgiving.

Details:

Cooked the Baby Back Ribs over applewood using the Big Steel Keg diffuser at around 300 degrees with the 2-2-1 method we've been using, except it was more like 2 hours smoked / 2 hours in foil / 30 minutes finished up with sauce.  Probably could have done 2 hours smoked / 1.5 hours in foil / 30 minutes with sauce and gotten away with it.   Used a very light cumin/salt/pepper/garlic rub up front & threw Famous Dave's Rich & Sassy sauce on one rack and Devil's Spit sauce on the other rack after the first 2 hour phase.

Removed the diffuser and brought the Big Steel Keg up past 500 degrees and seared the T-bones for between 10 & 15 minutes.    The steaks turned out Medium / Medium Rare.  The girls always say they prefer Medium Well but then they don't eat much and since Don and I prefer Medium Rare or Rare and have to eat most of the steaks, we try to get them off as early as possible/as early as the girls will allow!

Louie said they were the best ribs he had ever had...high praise from a former resident of Kansas City (he also attended the American Royal a few times - I went with him once).

Attendees:

Don

Louie
Tia
Hippie
Dan

Pictures:

Hippie didn't want her picture taken.... tough cookies

Tia was brave enough to try both steak and ribs

November 14, 2011 - Brats & Ugly Steak

Don't know what to say, except we're on a roll...

Video #2 from BMSMBBQ - Brats & Ugly Steak from Dickman's Deli in Tucson, AZ!

November 10, 2011 - Pulled Pork Butt

What can I say that can't be said with a video?

October 29, 2011 - Pulled Pork Shoulder

Intro:

Dan here.   Made some pulled pork sandwiches yesterday - they turned out great & were the best I've ever had.   They even got Hippie's seal of approval which is an extremely rare thing with BBQ!

Details:

Picked up an 8 lb Pork Shoulder at Safeway since they were on sale @ $1.29/lb.   Marinated it overnight in the Kansas City style BBQ sauce that Scott made when he was in town.

Put the Pork Shoulder on the Big Steel Keg with the Diffuser filled with Lump Charcoal and Applewood at about noon.   Smoked it at a steady 300 degrees for 5 hours which put it at about a 165 degree internal temp and then applied a new layer of sauce and wrapped in foil - cooked it for about an hour and a half up to 185 degrees internal temp and then removed from foil and put on the grill.  Cooked it for another hour until the internal temp was an average of 195 degrees, making it tender enough for shredding.   At that point I pulled the pork shoulder off and wrapped it in foil and let it sit for 30 minutes before Don used the Bear Claws to shred it - came apart very easily and he had it fully shredded in only a couple minutes.  

The only hiccup happened when adding sauce to my sandwich - next time I would prefer to add less & will have to be more careful....

Total cook time worked out to be 7 1/2 hours for a total of 8 hours including the 30 minute rest time in foil at the end.   Totally worth the time invested - as stated above, all attendees thought it was amazing!   I will definitely use this method next time.

Attendees:

Don

Chris
Nate
Hippie
Dan

Pictures: