Since last #Beersaturday we went camping, this week my wife and I decided to stay home, smoke some meats, and give our garden some attention.
I started the day with a Hop Raider IPA that was left over from camping last week. I really enjoy New Belguim Brewing's Vodoo Ranger IPA series and this one is great. I talked about these last week so I will move on.
Being that it was a nice day we decided we would smoke some salmon, a pork butt, and dehydrate 4.5 pounds of beef jerky.
The salmon we brined the night before in salt, sugar, and ginger. We rinsed the brine off and applied a honey, maple syrup, salt and pepper glaze to the salmon. We cut the salmon into smaller pieces to make sure glaze could reach all sides and be strong enough to taste in every bite. We smoked the salmon about 2.5 hours at 180 degrees farenheit, applying more glaze of honey and maple syrup about every half hour. It came out great.
We started with a 4 pound pork butt which recieved salt, pepper, and some Kinder's barbeque seasoning. It smoked for 6 hours at 280 degrees farenheit, while we worked in the yard and it came out killer.
While we had the meats going we grabbed another beer. This time I grabbed an Anderson Valley Brewing Company Bourbon Barrel Stout. Anderson Valley Brewing Company is located in Boonville, California and has been around since 1987, making great beers ever since. The brewery is one of the only solar powered breweries around. The brewery is large and produces many varietys of beer.
I loved this stout, the bourbon barrel ageing was excellent. The barrel ageing added a slight sweet oak flavor. Other flavors were chocolate and fig flavors. The stout is 6.9% ABV but drinks very easy. The only thing missing was a cool label. Anderson Valley has been using the Bear / Deer character otherwise known as BEER on their labels since the begining. Below is a few examples of their usual labels.
This photo is a screenshot from https://avbc.com/beers/ the breweries website.
So while we had beers in hand and meats smoking we started dehydrating 4.5 pounds of beef. We seasoned the beef the night before with a Spicy Lime seasoning from Hi Mountain seasonings. I have been using these for years and have not found a flavor I didn't care for. However, Spicy Lime is one of my favorites. Below is another flavor box I had in the cabinet, since the last time I made the Spicy Lime I threw the box out and just kept the seasoning in a ziploc.
We dehydrated the beef for about 4.5 hours in our dehyrator and it comes out perfect.
So for my next beer it was back to New Belguim Brewing Voodoo Ranger series.
This Voodoo Ranger is called Captain Dynamite IPA. Captain Dynamite is a hazy IPA with a ABV of 7.7%. It has a citrus and pine like smell. The taste is lighter then I expected but did still give the citrus flavors. Being that the taste is lighter it is an easier drinking hazy IPA.
So as far as the garden goes we have many fruits and vegatables that we grow and it all needs trimming / pruning to keep things nice and produce a nice crop. We grow 3 variety's of apples, cherries, pears, peaches, nectarines, plums, pluots, passion fruit, olives, rasberry, blackberry, boysenberry, blue berry, tangerine, orange, lemon, lime, 3 varietys of artichoke, asparagus, horse radish, strawberry, tomatoe, potatoe. broccoli, 4 varietys of hops, elderberry, loquat, pumpkins, 3 variety's of sqaush, carrots, radish, grapes, pomegranate, egg plant, 4 varietys of peppers, onions, avacado, and roses. I am sure I am missing a few but you get the point there is a lot to do. Here are a few pictures of the garden boxes we have.
This last picture on the right side, you can see one of our dogs and the other side of the brown fence is one of our sheep. We also have sheep, goats, a pony, bees, and chickens. So there is always a lot to do.
To finish the day I had a Belgian beer. Belgian beers are all about the grains and are usually very different then the American IPA (My usual) where it is all about the hops. But every now and then something new is a good thing.
I didn't know much about this brand Gulden Draak, but it said it was a classic dark red tripel ale. I like reds and this did not disappoint. Being a tripel it's strong with an AVB of 10.5%. The flavors were earthy and somewhat like a red wine. It was a nice change and great way to end the day.
Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend.