Like I would say no.

The major rules for the comp are the beer being judged must be commercially available and based on a recipe from a homebrewer’s beer that placed 1st-3rd in an BJCP (Beer Judge Certification Program) sanctioned competition.  Also, the homebrewer must have been an AHA member on the competition date.  It was close but I just managed to renew my AHA membership 7 days before the competition and I took second place in our club’s first annual Champion of the Pint homebrew competition this past April.

The morning that Brian called me was the last day to enter a beer into the competition so we had to look through the recipe and we figured out it would work on their system.  This beer is pretty much amazing.  For the beer nerds it’s all late hop additions (hop bursted with only 30 minute and under additions of columbus, centennial and simcoe and a massive dry hop of the same) and runs about 60 IBU with a super dry finish around 1.010 or 2.5 plato.  My scaled-up recipe won’t allow us to brew up a full 15-barrel batch since there’s a shitload of aroma and flavor hops, therefore we’re only going for a half batch.

This Friday I’m heading over to O’Fallon Brewery to get learned on brewing on a professional scale.  Since his call, I’ve brewed a couple small 5-gallon batches to mimic their process and equipment and further dial it in.  The brewery’s batch should be ready just in time to be shipped to Colorado in mid-August for the mid-September festival.  I’m not sure why the judges want the beer sitting for a month so we’ve planned the brew date accordingly to get maximum hop freshness out of the beer.  My homebrew batches seem to peak in flavor around 8-10 weeks from the brew date so we should be in good shape.  A few local beer nerd bars will have the ability to buy some of this “Sweet Nectar IPA” and I’m sure we’ll have a release party somewhere with it.  I get to take a keg of it home which is pretty cool, too.

The experience is going to be amazing but these are hard shoes to fill.  Last year, Jim Yeager (fellow GBS club member) and O’Fallon won second place in the comp.  We’ll just see how this goes and hopefully we’ll bring home a medal once again.

Picked up a pound of pig stomach on sunday. I got it prepared thinking that they just meant cleaned. I’d never actually cooked it myself because I knew you had to clean the shit out of it so I never bothered. Little did I know that when they said prepared they actually meant cooked. Dude pulls the stomach out of a vat that they had a whole bunch of them simmering away all morning in. That made my day a whole lot easier.

Took it home and cut it up, little bit of seasoning and then fried it up in some lard just to get it a little crispy. You could just cut it up and eat it but I like my Buche to half a slight crunch. It does get slightly tougher but it’s worth it.

Put it on some cactus tortillas I’d picked up and topped it with lime soaked onion & cilantro, queso fresco, chicharron molido, and some creama. Really can’t go wrong with these joints

And they were fucking delicious. We did three racks, two with my rub that I came up with for shoulder and another with my homie Kyle’s.  Basically took  Alton Brown’s version of the Texas Crutch that he has for braised ribs but did it up on the grill. We probably should have pulled them off the grill half an hour earlier but I let it ride for 3 hours since we had some heat fluctuations. Really need to get a legit thermostat for my grill.  The ribs were over a bit, the bones were just falling the fuck out. People like that shit but thats over cooked, you want the meat to pull off the bone.

The best part of this method though is the fucking sauce you make with the juices that collect in the foil, that is the whole reason I fuck with it. That shit is awesome.

next time I’m gonna fuck with some bourbon ribs from a recipe in Smoke & Spice

bacon, minced pork skin, queso fresco, smoked jalapeno cream, fuck your life….no really, fuck your shit. this is how I roll

bacon with pork skin sawdust

I’ve been sick since friday, ate some foul chicken that had me all fucked up and dehydrated. By saturday morning I’d dropped 6lbs. As I was in pretty dire need of food so I decided to walk into this Nicaraguan restaurant, Las Tinajas, on like mission at 20th. I’d walked by it plenty of times but never fucked with it.

Ordered the “Las Tinajas” combo plate and the mountain of food pictured above is what they gave me. Seeing as how I hadn’t eaten in a few days and my stomach was still pretty tender I only got about a third of the way through the plate. Anymore and I’m sure I would have taken a shit right there in the middle of the restaurant.

The plate consists of beef, pork, rice & beans, fried cheese, plantains, fried plantains, and some coleslaw/salad hybrid. I think the brick of deep fried cheese is really asshole in this plate, I barely ate any of it, it’s just so much of a fucking gut bomb that I couldn’t handle taking the whole thing down.

This is what I’m working on setting up right now, it’s going to be epic as fuck

Hey are you a lazy piece of shit who enjoys consuming bullshit because some fucking dickhead decided to sell it to you via your lying robot box of plastic dreams?  Well guess what shit for brains, Stouffers now has a microwavable toasted sub for you to shove into you fucking face. Impossible you say? Wipe the hot pocket cum stains off your greasy lips and listen to the magic!

We all know how hard making fucking sandwiches is. These monumental culinary feats should only be tackled by gourmet geniuses that are Subway’s artisan master sandwich virtuosos. You live an active lifestyle and can’t bother putting bread in a toaster and then stacking a pile of melted dogshit between the two slices.  Well my shiftless dumpy friend dream no more as the microwave gods have blessed you with the deliciousness that you only dreamed of.  No longer will you have to face the insurmountable struggle that is stacking two french bread pizzas together just to get a taste of the dream.

Stouffers has created a whole line of toasted subs. Your dreams of warm rubbery stale bread and greasy questionable meat products have been answered! All the magic of a sub without any of the flavor! Now you can burn your lips on factory manufactured cheese “sauces” as you attempt to tear away the stale leather that they call bread. Oh every dinner should feel this good!

Souffers can suck my fucking dick. Food in a box is straight up bullshit, fuck that poison. Sandwiches are fucking delicious and easy as fuck to make. If you support this garbage then your idiot ass can fuck off too.

Last month I went to Texas for SXSW and since flying into San Antonio cost me 52 bucks that’s where I landed. I decided to take a little bbq roadtrip during the drive to Austin. I usually don’t get to do this because my wife is vegetarian and eating sides at meat castles sucks. Anyways I Google map the shit and expect to hit Gonzales and Lockhart. The problem was my iphone put me on these retarded ass backroads with fucking prehistoric speedlimits of 30mph. Texas state troopers know I can’t drive that slow so I had to abandon the iphone and just take whatever the fuck streets I thought were the fastest way my shitty rental blasting death metal can get me to some small ass town I’d never been too.

I get to Gonzales later than intended and begin to reconsider my plans for Lockhart as I still have to get to austin in time to get my wristband, eat, pound beers and see my first rap show of the week. Figured fuck it, lets do the combo plate of ribs, brisket, cheese potatoes, mac & cheese and the finest beer they had: Tecate.

The fucking brisket ended up being the best part. That shit was actually pretty fucking banging, super flavorful and a decent amount of smoke. I like super heavy smoke but this was tasty as shit. The ribs though, man that shit sucked. I don’t know if they had been sitting out or what but the motherfuckers were overcooked, dry as shit and took longer to chew than they were worth. Sucks because I had high hopes for this joint. The sauce was served in bottles at the table which was nice because I hate when they dump that shit on your plate. Sauce was alright, not spicy enough for me, fortunately there was some hot sauce there too so I rocked it to a perfect ratio.

I smashed the macaroni and potatoes then jetted as I was really trying to hit Kruez in time so that I could still see some rap in Austin. Unfortunately I didn’t count of traffic due to south Texas winds of shit so that got scrapped. In the end my Texas bbq roadtrip consisted of one place with awesome brisket and shitty ass ribs.

Fuck it, there is always next year.

While this was going on I was around the corner watching this