Smoked Beer Can Chicken

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Hiya smoksgnlr!


You betcha! It is a great mop for any kind of poultry,especially Buzzards :lol:


It is also great with fish and shellfish and you don't necessarily need to use it only when smoking the above listed dishes. For example if you are grilling a piece of fish you can use this to add flavor to your piece of shark, or swordfish or wahoo or mahi mahi depending on your geographical location.

Oh yes! That includes your Lake Trout Beasties up there in Curve Lake!

ranger72 :)
 
I have tried other than beer in my BCC. These include sprite, pepsi, dr pepper, and diet pepsi. Of course i have used beer too, both dark and light; and out of all of em the one cooked with dr pepper turned out to be the juciest and tastiest. I attributed it to all the sugar in the beverage. That got me to thinking about using root beer and crazyhorses method of energy drinks due to the large amounts of sugar in them.
 
Apple juice works great ,I have also used wine {fruity},seasoned water,lemmon and spice water and thinned out BBQ sauce.
 
This is in response to the skin comments. I personally do not like the skin on my chicken when I eat it. So whenever I do a chicken I loosen the skin and put the rub underneath. The skin hold in moisture while I'm cooking it and then when the skin comes off after it's done I still have all my yummy spices on the meat! I do like the idea of wrapping it in bacon as an alternative, I think I'll give that a try next time.
 
Lady J

Welcome to the forums!

Placeing your spice rub under the skin of the chicken works very well and I wonder if you have tried brining?

I find that brining works very well with all poultry products , however you will find differing opinions on this matter.

There is also the option of Injecting marinades into your various cuts of meat and /or poultry products..There are threads on both methods here

ranger72 :)
 
I actually havn't tried brining but may give it a try this weekend as the boy and I are smoking a roaster chicken. I'm going to try and do it beer can style but it's such a big chicken I'm not sure it will stand upright in the smoker without falling over. We'll see how it goes and I'm sure that I'll be posting results on Monday.
 
I have a horizontal smoker and although i don't have a digi-pic of a beer-can chicken being smoked in my smoker I do have this picture and will attempt to show you how I have done it in the past.

If you look at my attached pic you can see the empty smoker...you may also notice that I have moved my second grate over to the left side of the smoker (you also have the option of totally removing the right-side grate.


Below all on the bottom you may notice a rack lying on the bottom of the smoker; This is usually where I place my steaming pan.

However; (the military word for But) when I do a Beer-can chicken I simply place the chicken upright/verticle (into a throwaway aluminum pan) using the base of the beer-can and the chicken's legs as sort of a tripod and I slide the the pan and the little grate (which you may be able to see,bottom of smoker) over to the left so that the upright chicken sort of leans or is supported against the left side of the grate.

Then I take a simple piece of all metal mechanics wire (which you can get at any local hardware store) and make a few twists around the backside of the chicken onto the grate and bring the running end of the wire snugly around the chicken's tummy and tie or twist the running end of the wire onto the grate in front of the chicken.

This keeps the chicken from falling over on its side and allows the beer in the beer can to percolate within the chicken and sortof steam the inside while the smoke and heat is doing its magic on the outside...

Sheesh! that was long winded :lol: but I think you can get the idea and if you have a different kind of smoker then you may be able to rig something similar up.


Hope this helps!

ranger72 8)
 
I use a beer can stand that has an insert for the can and a wide circular base that keeps everything upright. You can find them at most stores that deal with grills and grilling supplies. I also have a stand called the "Twin" made by Camp Chef that will hold two birds.
 
jlloyd99 the double chicken holder from Cabelas (shown in 1st of thread) will hold a mighty big chicken or 2 in this case. I also have the kind that Dutch is talking about and they also work great, but you can never have to many beer can chicken holders. Before we found these, cooking 2 chickens was the only way, they would hold each other up, kinda like buds do when they have tooooo many brews. BEER :roll: I mean BEAR.
 
I just stumbled across this site. It looks like a great place to call home. Here's how I do my chickens. First I soak the wood chunks in beer for at least an hour. I then coat the birds downs with olive oil and my rub. I pour about a 1/2 can of beer in my stands, add rub to the beer and insert into the chicken. I then pour off the beer I was using to soak the chips in into my water bowl and add a few more cans of beer. I cook the chickens on my vertical gas smoker at 350 until done. Now I probably don't need the beer in the water bowl and in the chicken stand, but when the beer cooks down in the bowl and thickens it tends to add some extra flavor. The skin is usually nice and crispyand the meat very tender. Sometimes I will inject them with cajun injector creole butter.

Oh, and I usually use Ice House beer. It's cheap and has a pretty good flavor.
 
Welcome Mystickal_1. This is an awesome site. There is lots to learn and some great folks that are willing to help out, When you can, pop into "Roll Call" and tells us more about yourself.
 
yo dudes and dudettes,

are you folks just hiding the empty cans
from your honey??

im in self imposed tee totaling this month.

this may be a way to float a few past my gal
with out her rubbing my face in it.
 
I hate to be the one to break this to you Larry, but you can use soda cans as a substitute. :lol:
 
Just another bit of info, they also make the beer can stands for turkeys and they turn out awesome when done that way. Soda cans, beer cans, soup cans whatever---as long as your using a good beer-cause if your using milwaukee's best you might as well be using water...lol
 
OK folks, If you want to try and "can" a turkey, check out Camp Chef's latest addition to "canning" technology. First they brought you the "Twins" and now they offer the "Turkey Cannon". Your liquid of choice is poured into the tube (cannon) and the turkey is placed onto the tube. The whole thing is then placed on a grill or in a smoker.
 
Man, a turkey sounds like a GREAT idea! But I have to lower the rack in my NBBD just to do a chicken.

Been thinkin' about getting a new smoker, perhaps a propane powered verticle - the idea of not constantly adding charcoal all day is nice. I suppose there is another thread for what smoker to get, but what do you people think?

I do a lot of ribs, shoulders, and the occasional brisket.

DT
 
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