July 4th BBQ

July 4th is one of those days that, to me, begs for traditional American food. , and that food is generally BBQ of some sort. I'm in the process of taking a long July 4th weekend, but still had enough zeal yesterday to go all out.

I learned to BBQ from a friend of my father's named Jim. Jim is a Kentucky native and he knows how to do BBQ right. Low heat, long cooking times, and tough cuts of meat that turn to melting tenderness. He makes the best ribs I've ever had, and has the secret sauce that was his grandmother's. He wont' tell anyone how to make, but at one point, he did tell me what went into it (but notht eamounts of each ingredient) and how to balance the flavors, although I had to promise never to tell my father who had tried to coax the recipe out several times over the years. My sauce has never been close to his, but now that I know how to try to balance the right flavors, my sauce is considerably better than it used to be.

I started early because I wanted to make real baked beans and I knew it would takes some time. I took about 3 slices of thick sliced homemade bacon and sauteed it slowly to render the fat. I added a finely diced onion to that. Mix the onions and bacon with about a pound of white beans, about 1/2 cup of molasses and about 1/4 cup of prepared dijon mustard (brown would be better, but it was what I had). Throw that into the crock pot for about 6 hours or so and it's prtetty close to perfect.

I also did some potoato salad, but that can always be tricky. I've normally been partial to vinegar based French potato salad, but it was July 4th, so the American mayo-based one was required. Potato salad is like stuffing. Every person and family has a recipe and all other variations seem odd and just not right. I opted to do a pretty plain one that was loosely based on Mark Bitmans's recipe in How to Cook Everything. It's straight forward: potatoes, onion, parsley, salt, pepper, and mayo. It was good enough for me and didn't alientate my wife, who's family has a different style.

Last on the list was the actual BBQ. I was up in the air between beef and pork. To me BBQ is normally pork, but I had a small chuck steak (about two inches thick and about 2 lbs) that would fit the bill. It got a rub of onion salt, paprika, dry hot mustard, and sugar. I put it on the rickety old Weber Grill with 20-25 briquettes set up for indirect heat. I added some hickory and alder chips at times and let it go for about 2 and 1/2 hours until it was done.

The important question was what to drink with such fare? It was a hot and sunny day for the NW (about 90 degrees). I had a lot of different ideas, and the decison process required a couple of beers to help make the choice. One of those beers while I was making up my mind was a Kapuziner Schwarz Weizen, which is essentially a darker-than-average Dunkel Weizen. I hadn't had one in a while and it was better than I recalled. It had a bigger malt backbone than most wheat beers. It had the typical Bavarian esters and phenols (banana and clove), but the emphasis was a lot more towards the malt than your typiucal weizen.

So what did I have with the BBQ? Full Sail Brewing Session Lager, which is an American lager. It's proof that American Lager is a good beer when actually made correctly. It's 5.1% alcohol and has a distinct malty nose (with a touch of corn in the aroma, although I'm not sure if they use corn in it). There's the faintest hint of hops in the nose. On the palate, it's light and clean, but still has flavor. (This isn't some Bud/Miller/Coors type of thing.) It has enough hops to be crisp, but isn't noticeably hoppy. Some people may have gone for the bigger American Pales or IPA's, but this is the perfect beer on a hot day with spicy BBQ. It's not meant to be a "serious" sipping beer. It's a craft lager that recognizes that many people just want a good beer to wash down good food. Proof that beer doesn't have to be "serious" to be great. What a great 4th of July....