BBQ Life #9
Many people have extended families. Sometimes it's sports teams or sometimes it's like those that of us in the fire service with our brother and sister firefighters. Well the BBQ community is no different. Go to any BBQ competition and very quickly you will see it. Teams helping out other teams in need. Checking in on each other, and yes it's a competition but we are proud and happy to see our families do well both at the competition and away from it.
Dog Star BBQ is a great group of guys that we have competed against a number of times. This team competes to help raise awareness and funds for Dog Star rescue a local dog rescue group. One of the fundraising events they put on is called Bark & Brew. This event is held at the Thomas Hooker Brewery here in Connecticut. It features unlimited beer samples music, raffles, puppies and you guessed it BBQ.
Now when Dog Star competes they use Weber Smokey Mountains which do not hold a lot of meat. In years past they had rented a large rotisserie smoker for the event but the smoker had been sold and was not available. Dog Star came to their BBQ family and team Hog Tied and my team Wile E. BBQ stepped up to help them cook over 80 pork butts.
To get this all cooked Hog Tied brought a custom built reverse flow smoker with the capacity for about 28 butts. We brought our Lang 84 deluxe and a second Lang 84 deluxe that I borrowed from another friend in order to get all the meat cooked and ready for the event.
This was the most meat I had ever put on to the Lang at one time which had its own learning curve. Do to the amount of meat it took a lot of wood to kept the temp up at first but once the meat started to heat up they started to radiate heat to each other which slowed down the wood consumption. Now all the pork butts had been trimmed and seasoned the night before by the crew at Dog Star so it really was a family effort of their seasonings and our cookers and techniques.
Saturday morning we all got there to get our cookers positioned, setup and lit. Soon the smoke was rolling and it was time to load them. We were able to fit all of the meat on the three cookers which was a crazy sight to see that much meat. It didn't take long for the air to start to smell really good.
While the cookers worked their magic we got to watch as the event came together for it's start time later that evening.
They were expecting between 800 and 1000 people to attend the event. So lots of room to serve the pulled pork and to serve the beer. On a side note if you get the opportunity to cook at a brewery especially if you like beer just remember to pace yourself, trust me with all the great beers on tap it was not easy. When the time came to wrap the pork we had an assembly line ready to help. Those of us running the cookers ran the meat while the Dog Star volunteers wrapped the meat and loaded it up to be put back on the cookers. We were able to get all of the butts wrapped and back on in about 20 minutes.
As people started to arrive they loved seeing the big smokers cooking away and sending great smells into the air. We had a lot of people asking questions and wanting to check out the cookers. It was great to share with the public our love of BBQ. Soon it was time to start getting the butts off and over to the the pulling table. 4 stations of volunteers stood ready to shred the pork as we brought it over.
By this time the band was rockin, the beer was flowing and everyone was having a great time. This is what the BBQ family is about helping each other out. It doesn't matter if it's a competition or at an event like this we are here to help each other and share our passion for BBQ.
We had an absolute blast getting to help our friends at Dog Star and getting to cook with our friends at team Hog Tied. We are already looking forward to next year. So remember love your BBQ family and till next month #cowboyup and #keepsmokin
