The title of this post is a tip of the hat to the book “A New Religion in Mecca: Memoir of a Renegade Brewer in St. Louis” by Tom Schlafly. The book details the challenges, struggles and at times blind trial and error of starting a craft brewery in the shadow of the Anheuser-Busch brewery here in St. Louis. The title seems to fit me as June turns to July, and I absorb some changes to how I’ve done things for some time.
The first change involved a much needed personal inventory of my skill set at work. For some time, I’ve moved between the roles of project manager / business analyst and architect as required. My personal development has been shortsighted at times and non-existent others, mostly because of the demands of project work - who has time to attend training, no matter how important it is?
After some soul searching around the dinner table, I decided to try to focus my efforts on developing a base of technology skills that would complement the ones I have developed through 10 years of IT experience. A balancing of the pros and cons lead me to the conclusion that learning some SQL and perhaps attempting to teach myself Java using Eclipse as an IDE would be beneficial.
The SQL will come in handy for increasing my skills in the business intelligence and reporting space, which will complement my project management and business analyst skills. Over the coming days I will install mySQL and begin running through Alan Beaulieu’s O’Reilly book “Learning SQL”. I’ve always learned the most when I can apply what I am absorbing directly to a personal interests, so once I’m done with this current set of lessons I’m thinking about attempting to use mySQL to develop a custom set of reports for my investment club. I’ve been thinking about using the tool to generate price vs. P/E tables and graphs for the stocks we collectively own and/or argue about.
The Java will come in handy as unlike many in my field, I did not progress up the ranks from programmer to architect. Instead I ended up an Enterprise Architect because I needed to be promoted someplace. While I have learned a tremendous amount about technology, I think having a working knowledge of a development language will help me in project work.
However, these new goals are not in of themselves the epiphany mapping to the title of this post as I set goals all the time. Instead the first change to come was moving from Microsoft Windows to Apple Macintosh (24 Inch iMac, 4GB RAM, 1.5TB of storage) as a stepping stone to getting started in expanding my development skills beyond HTML. Though more expensive up front, the Apple is quickly becoming the tool of choice for application development and has more than enough power to function as a home computer and learning and development platform.
The transition is now largely complete and like the advertising says, everything worked right out of the box. Because we live in a PC world, I also loaded Microsoft Vista Ultimate Edition using Fusion from VMWare. Interestingly enough, the install of Fusion and Vista went easier than any Windows upgrade or install I’ve ever done. In total, the entire process took about 3 hours, including beer breaks as it was a holiday weekend. I bought a laptop running Windows XP about 18 months ago, and the entire setup took close to 12 hours, including a 3 hour trip back to the store to replace the first laptop with a new one. Its easy to see why Apple has a cult-like following that is taking share.
I’ve been very happy with the switchover experience. Most of my existing files moved seamlessly across platforms, and what PC specific applications I did have are running fine in Vista. I’m most interested in the functionality of Fusion, which lets you take a snapshot of an instance of an operating system as you run, in this case Vista, on a virtual machine. Should Vista become corrupted from a virus or from mis-administering the machine, into the Mac trash it goes and I can recover to the snapshot install in minutes. I also plan on installing a copy of Linux as well in the near future.
While the first change was thought out and planned to some extent, the second was quite different. For the 4th of July, we were planning on having a barbeque with about 15 people attending. I got up early and was in the back yard around 9:30 AM to clean up my gas grill and get it ready for smoking ribs and then cooking food for the party throughout the afternoon and evening. I started up the grill to clean off some leftover grime from the cookout the night before and went about getting ready to start smoking three racks of baby backs around 11:00 AM. I came back in about 30 minutes to find the grill cold with hardly any flame coming from the 3 grill bars.
Faced with the prospect of attempting to repair a 6 year old gas grill before our party, my wife and I decided to head to Home Depot to price out a new one. I have been contemplating a move from gas to charcoal for some time, but there really has not been a reason beyond the desire to do it. On the quick drive over, I had to contemplate a move without research or thought beyond day dreaming about the change.
6 years ago, I bought 3 burner stainless steel grill at Lowe’s for about 400.00. This has been a great tool for cooking burgers and steaks. I even managed to “smoke” (as much as you can using gas) whole chickens and pork ribs with success. However, as I toiled away in my backyard, the world moved on to a price point approaching 800.00 - 1000.00 dollars for a gas grill, complete with 4 burners, side burners, rotisseries with counterweight systems and warming trays. We now need grills to match the SUV’s in our driveways. I was forced to face the fact that as a culture, we decided to move our kitchens outdoors. Who cleans these monsters? Can the average backyard chef even use many of the bells and whistles they have bolted onto the side of the modern grill?
Suddenly it was very easy to move away from gas to lump charcoal.
In short order I was on the way home with a charcoal grill that should capture the attention to anyone who desires a grill for their back yard. With a few hours to go and the help of my wife we had the new grill set up and smoldering at 210 degrees within 90 minutes.
The risks were great; a new tool, a new heat source and 15 hungry people at my house.
Much like with the Apple, moving from gas to charcoal and wood just works out of the box if you’ve planned your moves ahead of time. The grill is large enough to lay out 3 or 4 racks of ribs to smoke over indirect heat. Maintaining a consistent temperature is easy as well, the grill has a door on the front for easy access to a tray holding your heat source. This tray can be raised and lowered at will to control the heat and for the production of a sear. A few extra lumps of charcoal and mesquite every 45 minutes is all that is needed to maintain 200 - 220 degrees - the perfect temperature for smoking and barbecuing meats.
After about 4 hours the ribs were done and the grill took 2 full chimney starters of charcoal and mesquite to cook 12 hamburgers, 6 large portobello mushrooms and 6 peppers at one time, easily besting the cooking surface of my previous grill.
For a day that could have gone so very wrong, I was really happy that everything came out so very right. The grill works well, but is not without it’s flaws. Assembly left something to be desired. The handles for the vents are plastic and attached to metal that is to thin for the job asked of them. Both get way to hot compared to the rest of the grill which seems to have a better construction. The fit and finish is a little suspect, the doors don’t sit right and the hood pops a little when the grill heats up before it sits on the grill surface. On the plus side the unit has heavy cast iron grates for searing and the process of cleaning ash has been well thought out. All things being equal, not a bad tool for around 200.00.
What follows in a photoessay for some impromptu baby back ribs, planned for a gas grill but smoked over lump charcoal and apple and mesquite wood chunks. This is a 2 day process that begins at your local butcher and can be applied to baby back / spare or St. Louis style ribs.
Day 1
1. Have your butcher remove the skin from the underside of the ribs or remove with a flexible knife at home. (This is a must. Any good butcher will perform this task upon request - if you can find a good butcher)
2. In a deep Pyrex dish or large Zip-lock bag, lay out the ribs and cover with pineapple juice. I soaked these ribs for about 8 hours, turning occasionally.
3. After a good soaking, pat the ribs dry, lay over plastic wrap on a large cookie sheet and brush with a mustard of your choosing, then coat liberally with spice rub. I make my own but store bought is fine, just watch the amount of salt in the rub. My rub for these ribs included brown sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, chili pepper, Old Bay, cumin, kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper. Don’t be afraid to use your hands and rub the mixture into the ribs.
4. Cover with plastic wrap and place into the fridge overnight.
Day 2
1. Remove ribs from the fridge at least an hour before you plan on starting, allowing the temperature of the meat to rise. This is a good habit to get into whenever you are cooking meat on a grill.
2. If you are using wood chips, place them in a water bath. I used dry wood for this go around as I didn’t have the time to soak the larger chunks of wood this grill can accommodate. I'm also not sure if its needed with this grill. Only time will tell.
3. Set up your grill for indirect heat and using a thermometer than you know to be calibrated (not necessarily the thermometer on the hood of your grill) let the grill come to rest at about 200 - 220 degrees.
4. Place a shallow tin of water (or liquid of your choosing) over the heat source. I find that this provides enough moisture to help the meat stay moist while it cooks.
5. Place the ribs on the opposite grill from your heat source and close the grill. At this point, the hood should stay down. I restrict opening the hood to once an hour when I rotate the ribs and refill the liquid. On my grill, I have a second door below the heat where I can add a small bit of wood or fuel and I’ve found that this set up allows me to keep the heat in the right part of the grill. Opening the hood lets most of the heat you’ve made escape, and your grill has to work to heat back up once you close it up.
6. For these baby back ribs, I went about 4 hours at 210 degrees. I started brushing the ribs with a wet mop barbeque sauce about 3.5 hours into the cooking process. Any earlier and you risk creating a burned layer of crust on your ribs.
7. After 4 hours I pulled the ribs and cut into 2 bone pieces. In a large mixing bowl I put a fair amount of barbeque sauce and added the ribs, tossing to coat. Make sure you serve with lots of napkins. Enjoy!
Afterthoughts:
These ribs were a cooking adventure and I really did fly by the seat of my pants for the most part. However, they came out with a nice smoke ring and were moist and juicy on the inside. Because of the late start time, I pulled the ribs early so I could get ready for cooking hamburgers and hot dogs. I’m sure they could have gone longer and gotten to the point where the rib bone can be twisted and pulled a bit out of the meat - the falling off the bone stage. Luckily I’m at the beginning of learning how to use this new tool, and my next batch should be even better than these were.
