Pork Belly Burnt Ends

I thought I'd post about a dish I made back on Mother's Day that everyone liked so much, I decided to make it again for a Memorial Day BBQ we're going to. If you're a fan of BBQ, you've probably had burnt ends, which comes from the fattier cut from the brisket point. Usually they're made by separating the point from the flat when the flats are cooked and good to go. The point is returned to the smoker and continues to cook to render more fat and to continue to break down the collagen. The bark continues to develop as well and you end up with a delicious cut of meat that is definitely different from the leaner flat of the brisket. This recipe is essentially a take on burnt ends style but using pork belly instead of brisket.

I stumbled across this recipe on Instagram. It was one of those "you may like" videos. Like I said, we gave it a try on Mother's Day along with some smoked chicken and ribs and this was by far the crowd favorite...we definitely liked. And as far as smoking meats go, it was a pretty easy process. Because of the high fat content, this is a forgiving meat to smoke. I want to point out, this stuff contains a lot of fat...a lot! It's probably something you should only make every once in awhile, and you should probably pair it with something healthier like a salad. As most people know, pork belly is where bacon comes from, so eating a half pound of this is essentially the same as eating a half pound of bacon. Ok, enough on the warnings.  

I found a couple recipes out there, but the one I followed was from Vindulge. It's documented very well with easy step-by-step instructions and it's worth checking out. The first time I made it, I used half a pork belly because I'm always cautious when trying out new recipes and I figured my health-conscious wife would rather eat the smoked chicken I made along with the pork belly. This time there's a larger group so I'm making a full belly. The first time I made it, I went with Weber's Chicken 'N Rib Seasoning. This rub used to be sold under the Durkee brand as Chicken 'N Rib Rub and is one of my favorite dry rubs. For this second batch, I decided to try Rufus Teague Spicy Meat Rub; not because I didn't like the Weber rub, just because I wanted to try a different rub. For the sauce I went with Famous Dave's Sweet and Zesty as it's always been a favorite of my wife. For smoking wood, I used a blend of hickory and apple wood.

Recipe and Process

1. If your belly comes with skin on, trim it off along with any excess fat from the skin side. 
2. Cut your pork belly up into 1.5-2" sized cubes.
3. Season each piece with your rub making sure to coat all sides.
4. Bring your smoker up to 230F.
5. Lightly oil your smoker's grates to prevent sticking and arrange the cubes leaving space between them for the smoke to circulate (make sure they aren't touching).
6. Smoke for about three hours at 230F.
7. Transfer cubes to disposable aluminum pan.
8. Add about 1 cup BBQ sauce, 2T honey and stir to mix and coat cubes.
9. Add about half a stick of butter cut into squares.
10. Cover with foil and return to smoker for another 60-90 minutes.
11. Remove foil and cook another 15 minutes, stirring occasionally to make sure the cubes are evenly coated.
12. The sauce should have thickened a bit at this point, so remove from smoker and serve.

Before adding sauce

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Russian River Consecration Kit from MoreBeer

While I do brew a fair amount of beers based on commercial examples, I don't do kit beers all that often. Well, that's changing today, at least for this brew session. MoreBeer recently had a sale on their clone of Russian River's Consecration, one I've definitely been wanting to try. The recipe is out there and if you go through my posts you can see that we did a version in my brew club's barrel a while back. The recipe for today's version is slightly different than the one my club used, but it's not too far off. One cool thing about this kit, it includes barrel chunks from Russian River. Here are instructions from MoreBeer's site:

Vinnie recommends fermenting down to around a 1.016-1.018 with Abbey Ale yeast. He recommends the temperature to be 72°F during the first few days of fermentation, and then lets it free rise to 76°F until the target gravity of 1.016 is reached.
After hitting this target gravity, he'll transfer to barrels to start the aging and souring process (a secondary fermenter will be necessary - a barrel would be preferred!) Currants and Brettanomyces are added at this point.
After approximately 7-8 weeks, you'll want to add your Lactobacillus and Pediococcus. To kill two birds with one stone, we recommend pitching Roeselare (WY3763) which contains both bacterium.
The souring process can take anywhere from four to twelve months. Once the desired sourness level is achieved, you'll want to add the Consecration barrel oak chunk(s) until desired oak character is achieved.
Vinnie uses Belgian bottles when bottling Consecration, and bottle conditions using wine yeast. He mentions that he'll never bottle if the gravity is over 1.008.

 I made some minor changes compared to the recipe sheet from MoreBeer, but it's pretty much the same. Here's the recipe as I made it today.

11.0 # Rahr 2-row
0,5 # Weyermann Acidulated Malt
0,25 # Castle Special B
0,25 # Weyermann Carafa Special II
1.0 # Corn Sugar
1.0 # D-90 Candi Syrup - I'll be adding this in secondary rather than during the boil
14g Styrian Goldings (90 min)
28g Sterling (30 min)
28g Sterling (1 min)
Yeast Nutrient
Whirlfloc
WLP530 Abbey Ale - Primary fermentation
Wyeast 3763 Roeselare - Secondary fermentation
Russian River barrel chunks - Secondary
2.0 # Bob's Red Mill brand Black Currants - Secondary

Mash at 160F, 90 boil, ferment at room temp.

Brewing Notes
No issues with this batch. OG minus the Candi Syrup came in at 1.069.

Update 4/25/2017
Fermentation was very active yesterday morning and by late afternoon I had to hook up a blowoff tube.

Update 6/8/2017
I racked to secondary on top of black currants and the Candi Syrup then pitched Roeselare. I have a bottle of Consecration in the fridge, so the dregs will go in here at some point.

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Gose 2017

Today I'm brewing a Gose, basically the same recipe I brewed a couple yeas ago. The biggest difference this round is I'm kettle-souring rather than souring post-boil. The souring culture and process is basically the same as my recent Sour IPA. Here's the recipe as I brewed it today:

3.0# Avangard Pilsner Malt

4.5# Weyermann Pale Wheat Malt

0.5# Weyermann Acidulated Malt

0.5# Rice Hulls

1.3ml Hop shot (60 min)

28g Coriander (whirlpool)

21g Trader Joes Himalayan Sea Salt (whirlpool)

Wyeast Yeast Nutrient

GoodBelly SuperShot

WLP029 German Ale/ Kölsch Yeast

Mash at 149F for 60 minutes, collect 6.75-7 gallons and heat to 170F for 10 minutes.  Chill to 100F, pitch lactobacillus culture and sour until desired pH is reached. On boil day, 90 minute boil. Ferment at 67F.

Brewing Notes

No issues. Pre-sour gravity was 9P (1.035).

Update 4/30/2017
I finished the boil on this beer yesterday. Everything went smoothly. pH was down to about 3.48.

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Experimental IPA 2017

Today I'm doing a little bit of an experimental IPA. I got some hop hash a while back from Yakima Valley hops and I also picked up a used Blichmann HopRocket off the local classifieds.

For anyone that don't know, hop hash comes from what is essentially residue that builds up on the hammer mills during pelletization. It has a high concentration of lupulin glands and contains very low concentrations of vegetal matter. There isn't a ton of information out there regarding brewing with hop hash, but it seems most are using it for late additions and for dry hopping. I've read that some have had better results creating a tincture which was added at bottling time. I decided I'm going to try mash hopping with it and see how that goes (more on that below). I should mention, the hop variety wasn't specified when I ordered the hop hash, but allegedly it's Centennial.

In a recent The Session podcast featuring Julian Shrago of Beachwood Brewing, Julian talks about how for their IPAs, they add hops just about every chance they get during the brewing process. He talked a bit about mash hopping and how (due to the environmental conditions in the mash) it tends to lock in hop flavor that survives through the boil without adding hop bitterness. In other words, the acids from mash hopping are not isomerized during the boil and somehow they are bound in a way that volatile flavor compounds are retained. I decided this sounded like a good experiment for the hop hash. Assuming this works, I think the Centennial character will work well with the hop blend I'm using in this beer.

As I indicated above, the next part of the experiment involves using the Blichmann hop rocket. If you can't tell, I'm shooting for a very hop-focused American IPA. I had a hopback from Morebeer and while I liked the results I got from using it, I didn't use it very often. It wasn't a fully sealed hopback like the HopRocket, so you had to be very careful matching the inflow with the outflow so that you didn't overflow and lose wort out of the hopback. It required a lot of monitoring so it was kind of a pain to use. The HopRocket is fully sealed so matching flows isn't a concern. It is another piece of equipment to clean and sanitize, so I probably won't use it all the time. I'm going to use it inline between my pump and plate chiller. I'm also doing a smaller sized batch, approx 3 gallons and I'm still planning on whirlpooling. Some may say that whilpooling kind of defeats the purpose of using a hopback because you're returning the cooled wort to a hot boil kettle. With a small batch size, I'm able to drop the temps below isomerization temps very fast (hop stand range) so I'm thinking I won't lose much volatile flavor and aroma compounds before the temps drop.

Today's recipe is as follows:

This is for a 3 gallon batch
6# 5 oz Rahr 2-row
3 oz Crisp Crystal 60

2 oz Gambrinus Honey Malt
15.3g Hop Hash (mash hops)
1ml Hop extract (60 min) - I'm keeping this low in case the mash hops contribute bitterness.

30.8g Hop blend (15 minutes) - The hop blend consists of 7.7g of each of the following: Amarillo, Citra, Mosaic, and Simcoe pellets)

Yeast Nutrient

Whirlfloc

69.2g Hop blend (HopRocket, 0 minutes) - Same hop blend but in cone/leaf form, 17.3g of each
WLP001 California Ale
69.2g Hop blend (Dry hopping after primary) 17.3g of each

Mash at 150F, 90 min boil, ferment at 64F.

Water Profile - Tasty's

Brewing Notes
Just getting started but the mash smells amazing.
No real problems with this brew. My hop/trub filter got a little bit clogged with hop debris. Normally I would use my hop spider but I figured the hop rocket would filter out all the hop debris; I was wrong. Next time I'll use the hop spider to contain the pellet hop debris. The aroma coming off the wort is pretty nice. I really hope this carries through to the finished beer.

Hop Hash for Mash Hops

Update 4/30/2017
This beer was kegged yesterday and is currently conditioning.

Update 5/7/2017
I,m still evaluating this beer. I think it needs a bit more carbonation but I am liking it. Hop bitterness is about right, firm but not overpowering. I'd like a bit more aroma and flavor, but that might be aided by more carbonation.

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BJRR Golden Sour with Coffee

There's a lot of NHC judging happening this weekend. As usual, I sent a few entries off including the Bourbon Barrel-aged Imperial Stout that I brewed with several friends last year. It's a big tasty beer and hopefully we'll see some good scores when it gets judged. That was the first beer that we ran through the Sugar House Distillery Bourbon barrel and right now it's housing an Imperial Porter we brewed last year based on Lost Abbey's La Cruda. "We" are Brandon, Jeff, Ryan, and Rob, thus these are the BJRR series of barrel beers. The first two beers were clean beers, but our little collaboration group was anxious to do something a little more wild.

Ryan texted me a while back when he was still living in Denver about a sour coffee beer from Black Project. He said it was an amazing beer and I needed to look into brewing a sour coffee beer myself. To be honest, I thought it sounded horrible, but he swore it was worth looking into. My concerns were whether the coffee character would clash with the acidity produced by the lactic acid bacteria. I started doing a little research and stumbled across a New Belgium blog post about their sour beer with coffee, Oscar Worthy Coffee. Reading through this post definitely peaked my interest. Not long after that, I got my hands on a couple bottles of Derde Golf, a sour beer with coffee from The Bruery. I really enjoyed this beer and it opened my eyes as to how coffee and acidity from lactic acid bacteria can work together to make an incredibly complex sour. Lastly, I picked up a bottle of Libertine's Coffeetine earlier this year. I opened this bottle a few weeks back and it pretty much sealed the deal for me. So the beer we're brewing today is based on Libertine's Coffeetine.

I did a little research and found out that Libertine uses their golden ale for the base. A little more research turned up a recipe for their golden ale on which the following recipe is based. A couple things I changed, German pilsner instead of Belgian, and I sub'd half the wheat malt for spelt malt, an heirloom variety of wheat. Another change is the use of aged hops; this keeps the lactobacillus happy by keeping the IBUs low (theoretically close to 0.0). We'll be mashing high and use a lower attenuating yeast for primary. This will help ensure long term food supply for the brett and bugs. Then it'll go into the barrel along with some Roeselare for aging. When ready, we'll dry bean with a yet to be determined variety of coffee.

We'll be brewing 15 gallons total. The following recipe is for 5 gallons, or 1/3 of our total batch.

7.0 # Avangard German Pilsner
1.75 # White Wheat Malt
1.75 # Spelt Malt
0.5 # Flaked Rye
0.5 # Flaked Oats
28g Aged Hops (60 min)
Wyeast Yeast Nutrient
White Labs WLP002 (Primary)
Wyeast Roeselare (Secondary in the barrel)

Mash at 158F for 60 min, 90 min boil, ferment at room temp.

Water Profile
Nothing fancy here, we're cutting carbon filtered tap water with RO/distilled at a rate of 1 gallon RO to 4.5 gallons tap water.

Update 11/17/2018
This beer was transferred out of the barrel and into a sanke keg for dry beaning on some custom roasted Brazilian coffee, roasted by Jeff. We're going to add the coffee after Thanksgiving, then let it go for ~2 days, then tasting daily until we get the profile we're after. The base beer coming out of the barrel was great and should serve as a great blank slate for the coffee.

I noticed I forgot to mention when this beer went in the barrel; it was April of 2017.

Update 11/25/2018
Beans added this morning!

Update 12/1/2018
This beer was kegged this morning. Aroma is very nice, lots of coffee. Flavor seems a little more subtle. The coffee seems to have softened the soreness a bit. I haven't taken a final pH reading on this beer yet. It's definitely sour, but it's not the most sour beer I've made.

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