Pics are
here.
The bacon came out good but there is room for improvement. I'm a side bacon newb
. It's a bit dry (exterior meat), a bit tough and I gave it too much smoke.
I just sort of threw the dry cure together. I used too much TQ (though I like the idea of it for home curing). I put a TBSP of it on each side of each piece then added lots of brown sugar and some kosher salt for good measure. Next time I will do the brine and just add a bit of TQ. I had them stacked in a container and I flipped them twice a day but one was always out of the liquid. Need better brining containers.
I got the meat frozen, I will try to get fresh next time.
The pieces were on the smoker sub 150ºF for 8 hours then I finished in the oven at 150ºF. I let the bacon linger at 150ºF for two hours. (see cook details below). The meat was dry out of the cure ... should have done a much quicker cook.
I rubbed one with coarse black peper and one with my Ancho rub. Everyone liked both bacons, the black pepper was the marginal favourite.
For all the brown sugar I used I'm suprised it wasn't sweeter. The brown sugar was practically a waste, I could hardly notice it.
Cook
~~~~
Fuel is a small pile of previously used Royal Oak Plus briqs (red bag). Started with 10 mostly intact lit pieces. Smoke wood was hickory chips. Top up fuel was several handfuls of unlit & unused Maple Leaf Lump small chunks (not fines). This time used a full Brinkmann pan of water because I want to keep the temp below 160ºF for most of the cook.
2330hrs: All three top vents at 33% open, all three bottom vents at less than 1/3 open.
Time---Grate-----Meat
---------TempºF
===============
2345-----081
0000-----097
0015-----108
0030-----113
0035-----115
0050-----129
0105-----130
0120-----133
0140-----143
0155-----145
0210-----143
0215-----126
0230-----134
0245-----142
0730-----090
0035: stoked fire
0210: stoked fire, add more hickory chips
0245: set low temp alarm at 90ºF, hight temp at 160ºF, sleep time
0730: low temp alarm ... raining like a bugger, lets do oven finish, I don't want to stand out in the rain and piddle around coaxing a small fire
Three top vent mod: the mod didn't cause the WSM to loose the ability to control a small fire
