Breaking in the smoker with 9 pounds of butt

My latest grilling, NAY!, barbecue post is up at DC Foodies.
This week, it's all about the barbecue. Nine and a half pounds of slow cooked, smoked pork butt to be exact. I've been waiting months for the time and opportunity to break in the new smoker, a Chargrill barrel grill and smoker. For the most part, things went well, but there's definitely work to be done.
For one thing, the smoker ran a little too hot, which was my fault. I've smoked with wood before, but never for this long of a time. With my old Weber bullet, I used a combination of wood chips and charcoal. I'm more comfortable with this mixture and may use more charcoal next time. It burns longer and is a little easier to control. The wood worked out OK, but it burns hotter and faster than I expected.
All this is to say, my pork was a little drier than I like. It got 23 hours in the smoker, but could have come out after 20. That said, the meat was still delicious and the sauce helped tremendously. But when I opened that smoker at 9 a.m. the morning of the barbecue gathering I was throwing for my visiting brother and niece I was scared. The bark was much more charred than I expected. Then I pealed the butt off the grill. The heat had seared some of the meat to the grate, which tore off when I pulled. What was left behind was the most beautiful of sights: succulent pork, glistening with rendered fat in the morning sun. I picked and pulled a few pieces off and popped them in my mouth to check the doneness. Immediately I realized that the outside of the pork was too done, but inside all was right. Crisis averted.
For the beer pairing this time, I went with Great Divide's incredibly good Titan IPA. I'm a big fan of a lot of IPAs, but I was forced to pick one recently for the profile Washingtonian magazine did of the DC Foodies. The more I thought about all the great IPAs out there, the more I kept coming back to Titan. Pound for pound, it really is one of the best out there. Besides, I've had a chance to talk to Bryan Baltzell, Great Divide's head brewer, a few times, and he's a great guy who knows how to brew.
As I mentioned in my last post, we just started running my new best beer bars series on the DC Foodies site. For the inaugural post, I profiled Birreria Paradiso and declared it to be the best in the city, which it is. However, it's a little weird now. I went there a few days ago with my brother, niece and the missues, and now I'm not just the beer geek customer, but the local blogger who said the place is the best in town. Everyone, including Greg the bar manager, was super nice, but it's always odd being recognized. To top it off, the Birreria is framing and mounting my review in the bar. Of course, none of this will keep me away from the place. In fact, I plan to bring Greg a bottle of Cigar City (Tampa's first microbrewery!) after I get back from Tampa in September. That will be a trip of beer and football, as the missus and I get to check out our new field level seats in the Bucs' stadium and Cigar City's beers. Can't wait.

Let the beer bar series begin!

I've rolled out my first beer bar profile, Birreria Paradiso. The bar really is the best beer bar in the D.C. area. As miserable as Georgetown is -- and it is -- the basement bar's 16 taps, 200 bottles, complete lack of Bud products and the pizzeria that houses it are worth dealing with the people, traffic and the other headaches that come with that neighborhood.
As I've mentioned before, I've been itching to do this series for some time. Ever since I came across The Beer Mapping Project's beer bar listings, I figured D.C. needed someone to break down the city's great beer drinking destinations. I'll do these profiles once a month, though these places may require more than once-a-month research.
I mean, how else will I make sure my profiles and ratings are accurate?

Pizza on the grill, or how to overcomplicate things

My latest piece for D.C. Foodies is all about grilled pizzas. I'd been dragging my feet on the idea for a while. For one thing, my friend Eldora makes great grilled pizza. Secondly, everyone writes about pizza on the grill, especially when summer rolls around. So I didn't want to look like I was following the herd. But with a little insistence from Jason, the guy behind D.C. Foodies, I agreed.

Man, what a pain in the ass.

Mind you, it's not the pizzas' fault. Making the dough was pretty easy, and grilling the pizzas was criminally easy. No, where it got complicated when I decided to make three different kinds of pizzas and cook several of the ingredients from scratch. As always, I am my own worst enemy.
I will say that once football season gets started (oh, football, I miss you so), I'll bust out the grilled pizzas again. I just won't go all Julia Childs on them.
Fortunately, I know how to pick beer. In this case, I grabbed a four-pack of Oscar Blues' Gordon, the Colorado brewery's double IPA in a can (God love those people). My mom and niece were with me when I bought the four-pack, which led my mother to note that I'd get more beer with a six-pack. As I told her, this was more about quality than quantity, which is all well and good. However, would it kill the breweries to just do away with the four-pack? It is kind of a bummer to either suffice with a four-pack or shell out for two of them. Is this a law? Is someone looking into this?
Speaking of beer, I'm excited about a new series coming to D.C. Foodies. I'll be profiling the D.C. area's best beer bars. I've been itching to do this series for a long time and finally got around to pitching it. I've already got one profile in the can and shot the second. I've never been big into doing restaurant reviews, but this is right in my wheelhouse. Think about it, I'm running around to some of my favorite bars and bartenders, and talking to them about beer. What a hobby.

Who needs a drink?

This week's D.C. Foodies post is all about the Darby Flower. I've made a few of these since March, and man they're good. And man they're kind of a pain in the ass to make: the zesting, the muddling, the stirring, the shaking. Part of the beauty of a martini is it's such a perfect cocktail that requires little effort to make properly. The Darby Flower isn't nearly as fine a drink, and it requires a good bit more work, but it is worth it, and that's worth something.
My inaugural beer also made its debut a couple weeks ago. I took a case down to my buddy Chris' bachelor party in Savannah ... and brought half a case back to D.C. Fair enough. I was clearly dealing with a Bud Light crowd. Even the few occasions I bought Chris a Mama's Little Yella Pils or a Dogfish Head Shelter Pale Ale weren't met with much enthusiasm. Don't get me wrong, Chris was always appreciative of my efforts, it's just that the craft beers were always followed by more Bud Light. Much more Bud Light.
To their credit, the guys at the bachelor party were honest about their selection in beer. We were hanging out the first day and the only thing cold to drink was Bud and Miller Lite. I cracked a couple and rediscovered why I'm not a fan (but I tried, people, I really tried). So I couldn't help but to ask everyone else what it was that kept them such loyal drinkers of Bud Light and Miller Lite.
Quantity.
Thank god they didn't say taste. Nah, they agreed the taste was mediocre at best. However, they could drink these low alcohol beers all day long and not get too drunk. They were choosing quantity over quality. I can respect that. It's not my position. I'd rather drink fewer, high quality (and higher alcohol) beers, but I could understand their reasoning.
And despite their preference for Bud, most of them gave my hoppy brown ale a shot and said nice things. Did they mean it? Maybe. But knowing where their tastes lay, I didn't worry too much about having a few leftover beers at the end of the weekend.
Oh, and I joined Facebook. It turns out everyone one else already has.

Grouper love and Sig's mug

My latest grilling post for D.C. Foodies pays homage to Florida (my 32nd time and counting!) and one of my favorite foods in the whole wide world: grouper.
Fried, grilled, blackened and roasted, you just can't go wrong with that ugly fish (Seriously, try to go wrong with it. You can't do it). In this case, I tossed it on the grill whole for fish tacos, easily in my top 20 of great dishes. (Ok, don't try to screw it up. It's good fish. Don't mess it up.)
I wasn't planning on featuring a beer with this post (the missus put a temporary moratorium on beer purchases given that the fridge was full of it and I have four cases of home brew in the basement). However, I came across Rogue Brewery's new Captain Sig's Deadliest Ale, a beer inspired by the crabbers on Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch (must-see TV for the missus and me). Add in the fact that Sig Hansen's grizzled mug is embossed on the bottle and I couldn't pass it up.
I describe the beer in the D.C. Foodies post, but one thing that particularly made me chuckle was Rogue calling it an India red ale. This is a rarely used bastardization of the term India pale ale, a term with some historical basis. However, India red ale works as a descriptive term. "India" in India pale ale describes a beer that is hoppier and generally higher in alcohol than a pale ale (pale describes the malt, ale describes the fermentation). So if Rogue adds more hops to a red ale with a higher-than-normal alcohol content, why not call label it an India red ale and call it a day? Rogue isn't the first to do this, but they're one of few.
You've stopped reading, haven't you. Sorry, I'm a beer geek.
Speaking of beer, the home (sort of) brew will be ready this weekend. I'm tossing a case in the trunk and heading down to Savannah, Ga., for my buddy Chris' bachelor party. I'll try to remember to take some photos (of the beer, not much else).

Bonus Savor and a rant

My Savor rant is up on D.C. Foodies. Well, it's my rant on the food. The beer and brewers were great. The food sucked, again.
I also got a chance to develop the last roll of film I had at the event. Yes, I shot with film. Yes, it's antiquated. Yes, digital is superior in many, many ways. Unfortunately, my digital camera takes horrible pictures in low light, so I had to fall back on my manual, film camera, which is actually a better -- if more inconvenient -- camera than my digital.
Anyway, the top photo gives a pretty good idea how nice the venue was. Savor was held at the National Building Museum in downtown D.C. It was a great location. If the Brewers Association is smart, they'll hold the event there every year.
Enjoy the photos. (For the record, I have no idea who the guy in the last photo is. He saw my camera and insisted I take his picture. I did. However, the guy in the first photo is Bryan Baltzell from Great Divide. Nice guy. Great beer.)

Savor, where the beer is great and the food ... hmm

The Brewers Association brought Savor back for a second year. Good on them. Savor was a hell of a lot of fun last year and it was a hell of a lot of fun this year. Unfortunately, the food still sucks. Seriously, with all the work that the brewers put in the beer, is Charlie Papazian and the folks at the Brewers Association OK with the quality of the slop being dolled out at Savor? They can't be. On the bright side, due to the high quality of the crap served last year, I had a wonderful lunch beforehand at Oyamel.
Anyway, I did most of my venting in the D.C. Foodies post I co-wrote with Rob Rutledge. With all that off my chest, I'll just provide you with a few photos, including one of me chatting up Greg Koch from Stone. (OK, a quick sum up: The beer was great, but I'd like to see a few new breweries next year. The food still sucks.)