Sourz4life
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2016
- Messages
- 658
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- 139
Came out really nice. Smokey and flavorful.
After doing this whole process, I'm now interested in getting this charcuterie thing going. What is a good starter choice? I'm looking to enviably end at chorizo but I want to ease my way into the hobby.
THIS... is a thing of beauty. Great first effort.
How's it taste?
Meat my new friend, Bucky. I was off yesterday, and setup my weber kettle grill to try smoking my buckboard bacon. I used a 50-50 mix of maple and pecan chips to smoke it.
Only took 2.5 hours to hit temp. Can't wait to slice it up and try some today. It's a weird thing since I'm so used to pork belly bacon that is more square, then this slab of pork loin, or shoulder (I forgot which.) I'm going to cut it in the middle and then slice it, I should be able to get some uniform slices that way I hope.
I also picked up a half gallon of cheap bourbon, and passed it a couple times through a brita with Jack Daniel's oak chips in the bottom, then transferred it into a big glass jar to infuse overnight. I'll pull a quart probably for bacon bourbon.
I'm gonna try some fatback bacon next. I'm gonna start the build on the charcuterie set up this weekend.
Got that smoked maple bacon ale kegged. The bacon extract was quite flavorful. Now I wait.
I have the NB bacon red, just bottled last Tuesday. I'll let you know how it is when I pop one.
I also made a bacon tincture with vodka. Split one pound of bacon into three different experiments:
1) half cup of bacon fat with half cup of vodka.
2) half cup of toweled bacon in half cup of vodka.
3) half cup of fat, half cup of bacon, full cup of vodka.
My experiments have been sitting for 6 months, need to open them and see what the best combination is, or if it really mattered.
You could use a vodka with the least amount of ABV % you can find. I just found that if I added more bacon and fat in stages after draining it upped the flavor without having to add any more vodka. There is an absorption rate on alcohol, so of course at some point it'll be as powerful as it can be but I think if you just used low ABV% and kept switching out the fat/bacon pieces after like 5-7 days soaking you should get a pretty strong flavor. I know before I put mine into a 5 gallon keg I did a test. I added millimeters at a time to 8 OZ's of the brew I was using. I kept adding it until I got the flavor I wanted and just scaled that to 5 gallons. I only ended up needing to use 8 OZ of infused vodka in it which really isn't that much, but I infused it with alot of fat and bacon 2 times so it was extremely pungent. When I purged the keg head space last night to bring it down to serving PSI it smells like bacon coming out.
I'm curious how this turned out. It reminds me of the pork chop beer thread a few years ago. He never reported back, so I have to assume it killed him.
But seriously, I have successfully made a bacon beer by simply smoking my 2-row with hickory.
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