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Forgot to post this yesterday - had a good day doing old-school manual labor after spending a good part of Friday helping my neighbor clear a small maple tree that fell over in a wind storm Thursday. They're selling the house in 10 days and didn't want the tree or debris to cause any issues with the sale. So yesterday I set out splitting a bunch of it. It's funny. The older I get the more I enjoy manual labor. I hated splitting wood when I was younger. Then it was time for Lily and I to make a cake for Andrew's socially-distant, outdoor-5-months-late birthday party that we'll host today with 5 of his buddies. Vanilla tie-dyed cake (pic of that after slicing later today) with chocolate buttercream frosting. Outdoor theater screen and projector test complete. I picked up a cheap Onkyo receiver off CL and will use an old 5.1 Cambridge Soundworks system for the noise. Should be fun and the total investment was less than $200 which seems insane.

^^ I'd suggest ignoring temperature when it comes to when to pull brisket. When it's tender and jiggles, it's done. My recent experience is that it's also key to let it rest for at least an hour before slicing. YMMV, good luck, and all that.

Finished

Is that Donald Trump's 4th wife?

What the hell did I just watch? I am strangely unaroused...and yet intrigued.

^^ Used to be for me too, but I bought a small multi-function travel router/range extender on sale, and I use that now with the Pecan Pi or my Ropieee box.....gives better reception too than standard Pi with no dongle.

Some punk energy.

I can confirm that the approach also works with beef short ribs. In related news, this is what I grilled tonight. 45 day dry aged top sirloin from my favorite butcher. I took 1/3 of the 2lb monster and tried a reverse sear which came out quite nicely. The regularly seared portion was also quite tasty, but took an insanely long time to come up to even medium. More tweaking of the process. Most important lesson learned, the Traeger probe is crap at low temps. I will rely only on the Fireboard from now on.

I've been watching the Aaron Franklin Masterclass series and he says the same thing. Go by feel for doneness and rest is crucial. He only takes the temp in that latter part of the process, because he wants to let the meat come back down to 140ish before slicing. That way he knows everything has relaxed appropriately. Mmmm, brisket, aaarrrggghhhh.

Thank you. I think.

Shooting for a 14 hour smoke BBQ for this brisket. Started it last night at 11pm so we shall see. Shooting for a 180 to 190 internal temperature so that will ultimately determine the finish time. On deck are two nice Grenaches for the contest.

A couple of videos of Guita Rei. Here she channels John Lee Hooker with a dash of Creem. For the second one, use your headphones. It’s a binaural recording.

I will keep an eye on the web site to see if they ever implement wi-fi connectivity. Ethernet-only is a non-starter for me.

What in the hell is that?

We lucked out. This brisket was part of a nine pound slab that Mary picked out and after the 16 hours of cooking and one hour resting is super tender slice it with a fork tender good. Some tri tips we have had never got to tender no matter how much prep and attention we gave them. But yes quality does matter.

Bottom line, do what works for you! Me: I've never pulled one before 200F internal. The short ribs I cooked Friday ended upon just a little long (stupid work phone call) and were at nearly 210F by the time I yanked them but they did get the benefit of a 2hr rest. They were quite possibly the softest beef that I've smoked. One more thing that I've found is that tenderness is (not surprisingly) heavily influenced by the quality of the meat. I had a brisket a couple weeks ago that only got so tender, there was nothing else to be done about it. It still tasted great, but was nowhere near as fall-apart soft as others I've done. Such is life.

I have difficulties with the jiggling method and tend to undercook when relying solely on that. So I chose the hybrid approach of jiggle+temp@182 and it came out pretty awesome if I do say so myself. Let it rest for 1 hour and it paired perfectly with the Grenache. I now feel ready to apply for my HC grilling team membership.

Thanks for getting rid of that drivel.

Nice deluxe edition of "the three imaginary boys" I love "The Cure" since I was a teenager. I would say I'm sorry If I thought that it would change your mind But I know that this time I have said too much Been too unkind I tried to laugh about it Cover it all up with lies I tried to laugh about it Hiding the tears in my eyes 'Cause boys don't cry

Downloaded a new Raspberry Pi (v4 model B only) music OS, VitOS. Looks like it might be a good Pootie Pi option.... Has a tablet/phone device app for control. http://www.thunder-data.com/vitos-for-rpi4 Hope to try it this weekend.

Saw them on this tour, though not this particular date. (New Porcupine Tree Live recording from 2008, Indigo2) https://porcupinetreeofficial.bandcamp.com/album/indigo2-2008

Calm down Jeff, not all of us have enough money to have people move our speakers for us.

Fantastic performance (especially Cry Me A River)

Really liking the Fireboard2 so far. Between it and the Traeger app I was able to monitor today's cook (small pork shoulder) remotely and adjust the temp a couple times to ramp things up a bit so that it was ready to wrap when I got home. The dip in the graph is when I removed the probe while wrapping. The nerd in me loves this. Overall App View w/ the 2ch that I'm running today: It can run up to 6 channels and also has the ability to drive a fan unit for those that use Webbers or Eggs w/ a booster fan. Detail view The cliff at the beginning is that I had the app running while the grill was heating up with the meat probe just in the air waiting to be used.

Tonight I had a couple prime ribeyes and I did the reverse sear in the oven at 180 with a probe in the steak. I removed the steaks at 115 degrees and had a cast iron pan very hot and ready. Seared the top, bottom, and two long sides. Came out great for doneness, texture and crust.

Another socially distant gathering with friends, another round of armadillo eggs.

Endured 2 1/2 days with no power (because of freak storm and record incompetence on the part of National Grid) while all three of my neighbors ran their generators (cannot blame them.) Also lacked running water (because well and electric pump) and had minimal contact with the outside world. What Apple does to older iPhone batteries via their malicious code should be illegal and punishable by death. What T-Mobile does to "unlimited bandwidth" customers after the first 2GB is punishable by hanging in more civilized countries. What they claim is "speeds up to 128lkbps" but in reality what they do is limit all data for periods of time. This becomes a might frustrating when one is furtively trying to load, say, an electric company's outage map page in Chrome. Also, there's a bug where iPhones won't display the "trust this machine?" dialogue when connected to a Mac and instead go BONG BONG BONG BONG forever. This means they iPhone won't even charge off the Mac via USB. They dance on both side's of Hanlon's Razor over there at 1 Infinity Loop. I ended up charging my phone with a car battery and an adapter. I was (and still am) not so secretly praying that Fat Donny presses The Button in a roid rage.* *This couldn't actually happen even if he wanted to do so. Every day the POTUS is given a card with a bunch of launch codes on it. Only one is real and the rest are fake. I'll be you a wooden nickel Trump doesn't remember which one is correct 5 minutes after receiving the card. Ironically, we're safer from nuclear annihilation under his tiny, cheeto-stained hands than any other president since WWII.