Brew Day and Grill Day…all in one

Saturday was yet another brew day.  With the upcoming homebrew contest at the Dayton Art Institute, we had no time to waste.  We had to get our brew going. 

While Drew, Eric, & I brewed, Dave spent the day building his wort chiller and mashtun. Coupled with Dave’s new burner, all of his “toys” put the rest of us to shame.

Dave used 50 feet of 3/8 inch copper versus my 25 feet of 1/2 inch.  The additional surface area on his immersion chiller kills mine.  In fact, I won’t even touch the fact I deployed my older counterflow chiller to “meh” results.

Brew Day also gave a Drew a chance to use his beer gun.  The device allows him to bottle beer from his corny keg.  A quick blast of CO2 followed by beer and voila…bottled beer minus the typical homebrew bottling mess.  Did I mention I need one of these?

By the end of the day, the sun peaked out allowing us to enjoy the “grill part” of the day.  Mike again blessed us with his magical deep fried wings.  We also had another onion loaf which was devoured in minutes.  Also, for the first time at brew day, I grilled BBQ cabbage.  Although this might not look like much in the pictures, it is simply divine.

(Based on a recipe from Raichlen’s BBQ USA) Take a medium to large head of cabbage and core out the top to a depth of about 3-4 inches.  In a skillet, sauté a diced jalapeno pepper and half a small onion.  Add approximately 8 ounces of chorizo and cook.  Once done, transfer the meat mixture to a strainer and collect the draining fat.  In a bowl, add the meat mixture to 2 tablespoons of shredded cheese.  Place the meat/cheese mixture in the head of the cabbage and top with more cheese and a tablespoon of butter.

Grill the cabbage for approximately 2 hours.  If the cabbage begins to darken too much, loosely tent some aluminum foil over it.  When you can stick a skewer all the way through the cabbage, it’s done.  Remove from the grill, cut into pieces, and serve.

The true winner of the day, however,  was the 18 lb boneless rib roast Brian picked up.  At first, everyone gave Brian grief for deviating from the Brew Day pork ritual…but that was until they saw the side of cow he brought along for the ride on the rotisserie. 

The outside of the beef was seasoned with fresh rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper.  From there, we placed it on the rotisserie and mounted it on the Summit.  I was a little worried about the size.  At one point, I did a 16 pound turkey which just fit.  Fortunately, although the beef weighed more, it was better distributed along the spit.  The only downside was that it was too big for a drip pan.  It looks like I have some cleaning to do later.

The meat turned out good, if not cooked a little too long. This was another example of taking on too much in too small of a window (ie brewing & cooking).  Most of us prefer medium rare meat.  With the size of the roast, the middle should have been much more rare with the not-so rare folks enjoying the ends. Not today, the whole thing was more medium.  But, still good and still amazingly large!

The next brew day is already set for September.  We all can not wait.