Brenda and I received a gift certificate for a local department store when we got married 28 years ago, and we used it, plus a few extra dollars, to buy a Weber kettle barbecue that I used extensively for seven or eight years. Many, many wonderful meals were prepared on that kettle and it actually lasted for over ten years as it was taken to school and used for reward meals for my science students. I’m on my second Weber Genesis gas grill and once you get the grill seasoned with a few BBQ sessions, the food is great – plus, I love the convenience of gas. You can light the grill and be cooking in ten minutes. Gas grills are also wonderful for the large pieces of meat I cook for holiday meals like turkeys, New York strips and prime rib.
Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker
Lately though, I’ve been hearing the call of charcoal and wood chunks – and wonderful slow cooked and smoked meats. For the last year or so, I’ve been casually checking out smokers, but now I feel the need to move forward on a purchase. I saw a tweet today on Twitter from a gent in Washington (hi Normskibrewer!) who uses Weber’s Smokey Mountain Cooker for his BBQ endeavors. He highly recommends the smoker, as do several hundred people who’ve posted reviews over at Amazon. There seem to be some manufacturing issues with same of the individual pieces of the cooker, but everyone seems to get those ironed out either with Amazon, or Weber itself. Norm recommended checking out Virtual Weber Bullet web site for more info and it is a wealth of information for the unit itself, as well as cooking/smoking procedures and recipes for various cuts of meat. I’m sold! I’ll be picking up a Weber Smokey Mountain Grill this week, either from Amazon, or a local vendor. Amazingly, a small, independent BBQ shop opened in the last couple weeks less than a mile from my home. I don’t mind spending a few extra bucks to support local businesses, but I don’t know if they carry the Weber Smokey Mountain Grill, and how much more it may be above Amazon’s very low price.
I want to break in the new smoker over the Labor Day weekend, so I need to get my ducks in a row tomorrow before I head out of town with Stephen on my Summer of Music Tour to see Dave Matthews at Raley Field, in Sacramento. The show may be a bit of a somber event as one of DMB’s founding members died last week from complications from an ATV accident in late June. Hopefully, before I have my first Hop Sauce at Rubicon Brewing Company about 4:30 tomorrow afternoon, I’ll have purchased the new smoker.
We had a really nice trip to Sacramento. After we tried to check into the hotel, we headed over to Rubicon Brewing Company for lunch and ales. I was worried about parking, but we were able to park on the street about a half-block away. The place was pretty busy, with no tables available outside, and only a few inside. 
I started off with a Hop Sauce, an imperial IPA. It comes in a 10 oz goblet, and they’ll only serve you two. They claim that it has ten different hops in it and is a smooth, easy drinking IIPA. It was very good. After one Hop Sauce, I had one of the their stellar IPAs – their flagship ale, with my Cajun cheeseburger. Finally, I had a cask stout, that was also very good. This was my first trip to Rubicon, and I was very impressed. 
The bar is pretty nice and the service was OK (but they were busy). Stephen and I will be going back to Rubicon in August when we go see Dave Matthews at Raley Field.
We went back to the hotel, checked in and than headed over to Old Sacramento, to have a beer on the Delta King. The Delta King is a permanently moored river paddle wheel boat that has been converted into a floating hotel and restaurant/bar. Brenda and I stayed overnight on the Delta King about four years ago. It was very nice and the restaurant was wonderful. Their bar had nothing on draft, so I had a Newcastle brown ale and we watched the boats go by on the Sacramento River (man – there are really a lot of stupid twenty-somethings with boats…)
Next it was back to River City Brewing for an ale on the patio. 
They were out of their Kolsch, so Brenda had a wit and I had a Woodenhead. I tasted their cask ale again, but found it to be watery and flavorless. We watched the world go by at the head of the mall and I made dinner reservations for 7:45. We went back to the hotel and chilled until dinner time.
We shared a Brewmaster’s pizza and a Caesar salad for dinner. The food was very good – so good to forgot to take a picture:) We had originally planned on seeing a move, but decided to head back to the hotel after dinner, since there were no movies playing that we really wanted to see.
We slept in the next morning, and headed over to Johnny Rockets for lunch, before heading out of town. All in all, it was a very relaxing trip.
Brenda’s Jaguar needed a trip to Livermore for servicing (and we have to go back once the parts they had to order arrive…), so I stopped by The Good Brewer for a visit.
Julie, one of my blog readers, let me know that they had leaf Saaz hops in stock, and I like to have some of them on hand for a couple of my different brews. I was really surprised at the excellent selection of both leaf and pellet hops they have on hand – a real change from several of the other homebrew shops I’ve visited lately. Daniel, The Good Brewer’s proprietor, told me he expects to have a good selection on hand through the rest of this season, as well as for next years crop. If you need particular hops for that special brew, check The Good Brewer out! They also have a good selection many different specialty grains, and just about anything else you’d need to throw together a batch of homebrew.
I got to visit with Daniel for about twenty minutes and really enoyed how he could multi-task. We chatted about homebrewing and running a homebrew shop, and he never missed a beat keeping his happy seven month old daughter smiling the whole time:) I left a couple of my hoppy IPA homebrews for Daniel and a German Hefeweizen for Julie.
…both figuratively and literally! It’s a wonderful escape from the summer heat of the San Joaquin Valley in Monterey. The temps have been in the upper 60′s and low 70′s – with beautiful weather. Brenda is here for a conference in Salinas and we are staying at our favorite Monterey accommodations, the Merritt House Inn. The Merritt House is an old historic adobe that has been converted to a hotel – but probably more of a bed and breakfast. It is surrounded by beautiful gardens that always have many flowers in bloom. We’ve been coming here for years and we always enjoy our stay. It is walking distance to the wharf and just a block or so away from a trolly that will take you down to Cannery Row – and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, for free!
Since Brenda was off learning new ways to teach writing to middle school students, DawBoy and I took the trolly down to the aquarium and spent four hours looking at the exhibits and taking in the presentations in the theaters. DawBoy took a bunch of pictures of fish and had a great time.
After Brenda was finished for the day, we headed down to Britannia Arms for a couple pints and dinner. I had a couple nitro Murphy’s Stout and a local Dragon Slayer IPA. All good stuff. The ales are always properly poured at Britannia Arms. Either a Guinness or a Murphy’s on nitro takes time to pour, so I always order my next stout when my current one is about half empty.
The food at Britannia Arms is also excellent. I’ve tried a range of their offerings over the years and have always been pleased. This time, Brenda and DawBoy shared a Fish ‘n Chips meal and I had beer battered prawns.
