Beer Can Chicken & Baby Backs

I'd never tried the "beer can" approach to cooking a chicken, so today I thought I'd give it a try. First step was to rub the bird down inside and out with generous amounts of Lynchburg Jack Daniels dry rub, which my girlfriend brought me from a recent business trip to Kentucky. Then I snipped the top off the beer can (okay, soda can) and filled it 2/3 with my brown ale and a few garlic cloves. Finally the can got real...intimate with the chicken, and the whole assembly was placed within my cheap Brinkmann smoker. I used no-name lump charcoal from Smart & Final, along with a few good sized chunks of mesquite.

Six hours later, here's the final results. Real decent chicken, very moist and tender. The skin got a bit tough, but the chicken itself was wonderful.



So long as the smoker was chugging away, I figured I may as well throw some baby backs in as well. I'm so glad I did, they came out AMAZING! Possibly the best ribs I've had, and I've eaten a ton in my lifetime. They also got the dry rub treatment. After 3 hours in the smoker, I wrapped them with foil for the remaining 3 hours...they came out incredibly tender, you could practically shake the meat off the bone. Just before serving I brushed on a little KC Masterpiece sauce, mixed with some 16 year old Spanish balsamic vinegar. These went FAST, I was lucky to snap this picture of the last half-rack. Oh man...smoked ribs & chicken, a nice mixed salad, all washed down with copius amounts of Kolsch and brown ale!

Those look awesome. I bet they tasted even better.

Oh man. I want those ribs.

So you cooked them for six hours (three in foil) using indirect heat, right? I'm so trying that this weekend.

Danek said:

So you cooked them for six hours (three in foil) using indirect heat, right? I'm so trying that this weekend.

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Yes, inside a vertical water smoker. The pan of water sits between the charcoal and the food, and helps keep the internal temperature right around 220°F. The ribs went on the top shelf, so their drippings would hit the chicken on the way down.

For the last half hour, I took the water pan out, to bring the temperature of the chicken up to a safe temperature.

I've done beer can chiken before on a gas grill and it always turns out great and it only takes about 1.5 hours at 350 degrees. Only turn on the outside burners so the chicken is in the middle and not over direct flame.

Snakebone said:

I've done beer can chiken before on a gas grill and it always turns out great and it only takes about 1.5 hours at 350 degrees. Only turn on the outside burners so the chicken is in the middle and not over direct flame.

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Mmmm yummy! Been awhile since I've done that. Methinks it's time to pull a bird out of the freezer........:rockin:

Wow that looks very tasty!

BlindLemonLars said:

Yes, inside a vertical water smoker. The pan of water sits between the charcoal and the food, and helps keep the internal temperature right around 220°F. The ribs went on the top shelf, so their drippings would hit the chicken on the way down.

For the last half hour, I took the water pan out, to bring the temperature of the chicken up to a safe temperature.

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Sweet! Thanks for the info

Snakebone said:

I've done beer can chiken before on a gas grill and it always turns out great and it only takes about 1.5 hours at 350 degrees. Only turn on the outside burners so the chicken is in the middle and not over direct flame.

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That's how I'm going to do the next beer can chicken, on my gas grill. While the flavor from the smoker was great, the skin got rubbery and hard. I'll put a smoker box of wood chips over one of the burners, so I'll hopefully get a crisp roasted chicken that still has some smokiness. The beer can should keep it moist.

I'm never grilling baby-backs again though...smoker all the way!!

OK, you're probably sick of reading about my damn beer can chickens. Too bad!

Tonight, I went the gas grill route. Rubbed the bird down with a mixture of Old Bay seasoning, ancho & chipotle powders, onion & garlic powders, kosher salt and brown sugar. Excess dry rub went in the can, along with my brown ale and a few smashed cloves of garlic. The chicken went in the left side of my grill (with the burner unlit) while a steel box of hickory chips went over the lit burner on the right. I walked away for an hour, then wrapped foil around the chicken and let it cook another 1/2 hour.

SPECTACULAR!!! Without a doubt, the moistest chicken I've ever had, but the skin was still crisp and delicious. Not as smoky as the bird in the Brinkmann, but twice as good and cooked in less than a 1/4th of the time. It was so tender I didn't even need the knife to carve, I just pulled it apart with my hands.

The smoker is now officially relieved of chicken cooking duties! I'll still assign it to ribs and brisket though.

In defense of your smoker...

It could be the juices from the ribs dripping onto the chicken kind of fried the skin on the chicken on their way down...

kornbread said:

In defense of your smoker...

It could be the juices from the ribs dripping onto the chicken kind of fried the skin on the chicken on their way down...

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I think it had more to do with the agonizingly slow heat over six hours...never getting hot enough to crisp the skin. "Fried" would have been nice, this was mummified like King Tut's forehead! Rubbery, inedible.

every time I have had chicken off a smoker (turkey too for that matter) the skin turns to rubber, tasty-tasty rubber, almost like tough smoky chewing gum.