Category: News

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Our Founding Story

Engine 6161

HFPD BBQ Flyer

Here in the California Wine Country, using wine making oak for barbecuing is a local tradition. While cooking for our local volunteer fire department at our annual fund raising BBQ, I discovered how good this wine making oak makes food taste. In 2018 we scored a whole pickup load of oak from the winery where my wife works, and cooked the entire BBQ (tri-tip and chicken) over it and people were raving about how good the food was! It’s been the same crowd and same recipe for years, The difference was the oak. This inspired me to make these barbecue pellets to share with the rest of the smoker community.

Engine 6161
Welcome to the Hopland Fire Barbecue
Grilling
Tom in the background cooking.
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Better than barrels?

Wine Making Oak

When wine is made in stainless steel tanks, oak is added to produce similar flavors to wine aged in barrels. This wine making oak is usually French White Oak that is carefully toasted. The degree of toasting is carefully controlled to impart different flavors to the wine. Wine making oak is immersed in wine for months, deeply infusing each piece. And because it is toasted, it rapidly soaks up the wine.

Barbecue pellets made from wine making oak benefit from being toasted. Toasting removes harsh volatile compounds that can give smoked foods an acrid flavor. Each piece of oak is fully toasted unlike a barrel which is only toasted on the inside. Oak being a neutral flavored hardwood and having a high BTU content is an excellent wood to barbecue with. Not only is each piece deeply saturated, but the pink color seen above are wine lees that are packed with flavor. Wine making oak, and only wine making oak, goes into every wine infused oak barbecue pellet we make.

We hope that you enjoy the food cooked with these pellets as much as we do.