Notorious BGE

For Father's Day I got a Big Green Egg. I practiced a couple of times, then went whole hog on 13# of pork butt. Here's how it went down.

Started with two pieces of bone-in pork butt. They were dried, coated with mustard, then liberal application of butt rub. Then they went into the fridge overnight.

I loaded the Egg with charcoal and fired it up. My one mistake with the Egg was allowing the temp to get too high at the start. My thermometer did a 360 it got so hot, probably 800F. So it took some time to cool it off. I put them on at about 325F and did 1 hour/pound (about 6 pounds each) at 300F. It is crazy easy to lock in the temp on the Egg. My temp didn't vary more than about 15 degrees for the entire 6 hour smoke.

After about 4 hours I wrapped the pork in foil and let it finish to 200F. I didn't add any charcoal the whole time and when I went back out to cook steaks last night, there was still about half of the charcoal left.

The meat pulled off easily. It had a little less smokiness than I would like, so next time maybe more chips or even a few chunks of wood. But these butts made for a great Saturday supper with Shawn and Suzanne.

Tomato mozzarella salad, apple cole slaw, and pulled pork 

Wine Weekend - Part 2

Today I racked the reds. It is possible that the worst of my 2015 reds is better than the best of my 2014 reds. Lisa has declared the 2014 second-run elderberry her favorite wine. In 2015, the second run wound up with about 1/3 blackberry and so far this seems to be an improvement.

Is it a red? Is it a rosé?

The elderberry-blackberry blend was roughly 2/3 elder, 1/3 blackberry.  This wine took the oak very well. It is fruity and dark and jammy.

I'm calling this EB. It will certainly make it to the label.

The straight elderberry has less oak than the EB, but well enough. This wine is less fruit-forward, thick and tannic.

Straight elderberry wine

Finally, today I racked the blackberry. This was a straight-juice wine, one of the first I've tried. It has an interesting, fruity pop. I'm going to lightly oak this one, and so I added 7 cubes per gallon. I will also probably nudge it with a hint of vanilla.

I'm told this color is typical of blackberry.

For Father's Day I became and EGGhead. I lit it and played around for a few hours last night, cooking some cedar plank salmon. I hope I'm far enough up the learning curve that I don't ruin the 13# of pork butt we have planned for today.

Wine Weekend - Part 1

It is too hot for anything to really grow outside, including weeds. We have started watering early in an effort to just keep things healthy. So this weekend will be spent catching up on winemaking. Friday I tackled the 1 gallon batches.

First up were the blueberry wines. We have a straight blueberry which isn't bad, but suffers from a little foxiness from the bit of Concord used. For unclear reasons, this foxiness is missing from the blueberry hibiscus, which was made from the seconds. Both wines are clear, with good color and taste. Of the two, I prefer the hibiscus blueberry. They will be bottled soon, dry.

Blueberry and Hibiscus Blueberry Wines

Arkansas Black was made from straight juice of apples given to me by one of my patients. It could be that I just don't like apple wine. I find this wine unremarkable. I have to search for any hint of apple. The acid is about right, as are the tannins. I'm afraid that no matter what I do this this I won't like it that much.

Varieta Tropical is my Christmas Tutti Fruiti freezer wine. This wine is a pleasant surprise. It's only problem is its tea color. It has a nice floral aroma, just a little green peppery bite. Tannins are a little prominent. It might need some acid and a little backsweetening, but this wine has much more promise than the apple.

Costa Rican Hibiscus batch number two tastes as good as batch number one, like a combination of red hots and peppermint candies. Like the first batch, it is slow to clear however and will require a clarifier.

Arkansas black, Varieta Tropica, and Costa Rican Hibiscus wines

The 2016 citrus combo wine is clearing nicely. This wine is citrusy without the bandaid smell some of my citrus wines get. I'll sweeten this a little bit and we'll have a nice wine for next summer.

2016 Citrus Wine

Tomorrow we'll get to the elderberry and blackberry wines. And some more outside watering.

A Tidy Yard

It is interesting what having no kids at home means for keeping the yard tidy.

Saturday saw no relief from the high temperatures. We worked outside in 95F (35C) moving the last of the plants out of the greenhouse. The plumerias are back in their summer homes.

Plumerias in their summer home

We are experimenting with some of the greenhouse fruiting trees. We repotted the fruiting sapodilla and our newest citrus, a Persian lime and a calamondin. The Barbados Cherry and the other sapodilla will spend the summer on the porch. The bag of Barbados cherries in the freezer is growing. I didn't add them to my freezer wine last January in the hopes of having enough for a 1 gallon batch this year.

Barbados Cherry, loaded with fruit and flowering again

Saturday afternoon Shawn and Suzanne came over for some pool time. We opened the last bottle of Passion fruit wine.  This wine returned some nasty comments in the KC Cellarmasters wine competition, despite my high hopes. Not sure what they were thinking. All agreed that this wine was fantastic. The aroma was just like cutting open a ripe passion fruit, and the wine was well balanced. The bottle was empty in a half hour.

Sunday remained hot. I have been considering removal of the bananas from the greenhouse for some time now. Sunday I finally did it. The blooms are too infrequent and besides, bananas really are only good in wine as a body building additive. I cut them down rather than digging them out in case I get a case of greenhouser's remorse. But the center of the house has opened up nicely and I may make up for the loss of the bananas with lychee production.

No room in the greenhouse for shy producers

 The beds are largely tamed. One little section of the greenhouse bed is out of control, and the berms east of the pool need to be rid of their ash seedlings. I'm actually thinking about tackling the Dawn Redwood bed...something I haven't had time to get to for years.

Dinner Sunday as grilled cabbage with a basil pesto sauce and jerk chicken tenders. I thought about opening one of my wines but we have three bottles already open so I could not justify it.