April 13, 2024 • 37 mins
Certainly a "Texas-inspired" podcast -- Learn all about Big Bore Barbecue in Hanover from its owner/founder, Chad Brink! Nordo, KFAN's Paul Charchian and Aaron from Northern Fire all join for a roundtable of beers and BBQ!
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(00:04):
Hey there, I'm Eric nord Quizfrom KFA and Radio. Welcome to Hops
and Hoggs, a podcast that turnslocal beer and local barbecue into one conversation.
This episode features Aaron from Northern FireGrilling and Barbecue Supply and KFA ends
Paul Charchian as we get to knowall about Big Boar Barbecue in Hanover,
(00:24):
Minnesota. Big Boar Barbecue and Hanover. First of all, this place is
amazing, and second of all,thank you so much, Chad Brink owner
cheers to you by the way theirhair. Thank you for having us,
Thanks for having Paul Charchion, AaronBordage Northern Fire Grilling and Barbecue Supply,
And it's part of this podcast.I don't know how many episodes, and
(00:45):
this is so fresh Hops and Hogs, so I don't know how many episodes
you've listened to. But really mywhole goal with this podcast, Chad,
is whether on the hop side,it's getting to understand the vision and the
beauty of building a brewery, buton the barbie side, specifically in Minnesota,
the challenges the vision and the beautyof building a barbecue restaurant such as
(01:07):
this start with the simple stuff gettingit out of the way, Chad,
when did you open Big Boar Barbecuehere in Hanover. Well, we were
fortunate enough to open five weeks beforeCOVID to the day, perfect timing,
right yep, January eleventh, twentytwenty. Sounds like we all have a
similar timeline, so it's kind ofcrazy. Yeah, And we've talked about
that before. Aaron here from NorthernFire, you know, opening up and
(01:30):
from an at home standpoint, whichkind of built me. I'm one of
those COVID kids as it pertains tobarbecue, Chad. Where I grew up,
you know, grilling and doing alittle bit of smoking, but like
prime rib in the oven on aholiday that was kind of the extent ribs
once in a while. But itwas when I had to eat a lot
of my food at home that Idecided to invest on the barbecue side.
(01:52):
And from your standpoint, I knowyou've been doing it a heck of a
lot longer than that. What inspiredyou to jump into the world of barbecue?
Probably well over twenty five thirty yearsago. I would always go down
and turkey hunt at my uncle's farmin Nebraska, and he had an old
fuel oil barrel smoker where you'd builda fire on one side and then cook
(02:13):
on the other side. And sowe would always come into town on Thursday
afternoon and I would start three packerbriskets. Back then I was three.
Well, I want to make surewe have leftovers. It's a long cook,
you know. When you took thatway, that's that's an eighteen twenty
four hour cook, low and slow, constantly moving them around. And then
(02:34):
I would always try something different,you know, so I would play with
rub combinations. Back then, Iwould do a lot of wet mops with
a so I would use shiner beeras a beer mop with some vinegar and
mops work great, but they arevery labor intensive, a lot of cost,
but they do it. How longgoes this? That would be all
(02:55):
early two thousands, you know,late nineties, early two thousands. Wildly
different time though, I mean notthat long ago. But at the same
time, the explosion and barbecue,I mean, you're the things you probably
had access to then compared to menow or quite a bit different. I
would get very much down there wasunique because a lot of hickory abundant,
(03:15):
but they had oak. I loveit. And then my uncle had you
know, peach trees on the farm, so I would use apple, I
would use peach, I would usecherry. Over the years, I've kind
of fallen in love with cherry.We do a lot of pork, but
I have a soft spot for forbeef, and pork really doesn't seem to
(03:36):
care. You. You can throwapple at it, you can throw cherry
at it, you can throw peachat it, you could throw a mulberry
at it. As long as you'regiving it a fruit wood, it seems
to be happy. Beef really seemsto respond well to cherry. And I
don't know, I don't know.It's color is awesome, The color is
awesome. The profile is just whatI like. So that's what we do
(03:57):
here. It's it's an oak basewith a hickory and cherry blend on there
on the front side of the cooksnice and then we go back to oak
primarily on the backside, you know. And sometimes because we are one hundred
percent wood fire, there's many timesit's a wrapped product and we are still
cooking with oak. Wow. Youknow, hickory and cherry are not native
here, no chad, so youknow, I guess I'm local. Cherry
(04:20):
but the hickory does get trucked infrom central United States and Pecon would be
Texas based, ye, And Igotta believe that's that's more expensive. And
there aren't a lot of other placesin town that are using hickory and cherry.
If they're doing barbecue, I hopethey're buying some hickory. It just
seems to have the right profile toget that that punch that you're looking for.
(04:42):
Yeah, I fell in love withoak. I was out in California
working and stopped into this little holein the wall Italian place, and I
had a ribbi that was cooked onan outdoor grill one hundred percent wood,
and it was all oak. Andthe profiles that came through with just that
oak was amazing. And I waslike, I asked him, like,
(05:04):
what kind of would are you using? She's like, that's red oak from
the farm like and I'm like,all right, I'm sold. Like it's
that's a good flavor profile on thatoak. Red oak is quite a bit
different than white oak. In myexperience, I feel I haven't found a
big difference, Like for the lightand the red. What about post oak?
You want to go down the PostOak road? Because I honestly think
(05:25):
oak is oak exactly. That's what. But if you talk to a text
and they'd say you have to usepost oak, but I would ask him
do you have any red or whiteoak down there? And they'd say no,
Yeah, I was joke. It'slike when I go to Texas,
I assume that all those fence polesyou see are eventually going to be barbecuemor
professor. Can I be the guywho asked what post oak is? Yeah,
I'm taking post malone he's from,but not post oak. Within the
(05:48):
oak, within the oak family,you have a bunch of subspecies. So
you got your white oak, yourred oak, a post oak. I
mean I would venture there's probably aton of subspecies of oak. Yeah,
around here we typically see a whiteokre at red oak, and it's pretty
evident which one you've got in yourhand when you have it. Well,
here's the cool thing about Big Boarhere in Hanover. It's not just a
(06:09):
barbecue restaurant. It's an arboretum.That's I think that's one of the best
parts of it. You know,charge you actually you consummated this this event
right here, this podcast, andyou know you were you in a weird
way to put it. But butit's it's nine to Dune on the feast,
and it's it's maybe two years agosomething like that. I forget exactly
(06:30):
when it happened. But when youget excited about something, you have to
share with the world. I do. That's one of your qualities. And
during the feast, you know,I don't remember, it wasn't a Hall
and Oates conversation. Something football related. Who knows the Beatles are terrible or
underrated, you know, whatever roadswe go down when we deviate from sports,
nine to Dune. But you wereso adamant about how awesome this place
(06:53):
was, the incredible experience you had, how good the food was. And
now a couple of years later,here I am. I'm saying, Charch
can you can you can you askChad if we can get a restaurant and
talk to him about his business?How'd that all come about? Well,
okay, I had complained for years, there's no reason Minnesota can't have good
barbecue. You know, there's there'snot a reason we can't, and we
(07:14):
didn't. You know, like myentire adult life, I've been waiting for
good barbecue to come to Minnesota,and I'd frequently ask him on social media,
you know, what do you likefor barbecue? And then I go
to these places I'm gonna I can'tsay, I won't say the name of
one, and I'm tempted to likemake some sign or something to tell you
like people would love, and I'dgo there and be like, Nah,
(07:35):
it's f Chad's. You'll know onethat has a barbecue restaurant, So it's
not us, right, And sothen people started get in my ear about
Big boor after after it opened,including my coast on Fantasy Football Weekly Matt
Harrison, who lives about a quartermile that way. You might be here
later. You might be here later, that's right, And so like I
(07:56):
was skeptical because you should be.No, you know, if any Minnesota
ever like, oh, I've gota great barbecue place, you know,
I'm automatically worried. This one livedup to the hype, so different on
its hold, a whole different planeof existence in every other barbecue I have
had here. And then it wasfortunate to get to know Chad and all
of the things that he's put,all the effort that he's put into the
(08:18):
building, the wood, the meat, you know when you hear all of
the effort, none of it's byaccident. It's all by design and totally
unique. There's almost no it's hardto even find Texas barbecue in the Twin
Cities, let alone good Texas barbecue. What Chad has done here here is
just crack the code in a waythat, honestly, I don't think to
(08:39):
the all the places I've tried inthe Twin Cities, nobody's done it at
this level. And it's been animportant thing for you here as you built
this Chad to whether it's researching,I mean, you know, market research
from an eating standpoint, from acooking standpoint, your knowledge not only of
how it's done in Texas, there'sa beer component into it that I'd like
(09:00):
to get to at some point aswell. Apparently some Boerman is here too.
But in some ways I've I know, I'm in Minnesota, but I've
walked into the lone Star state insome respects as it pertains to food well,
and that was the goal. Imean, I always say Texas inspired,
because I do do some things thatare clearly different than Texas. Ninety
percent of the time in Texas,you're going to see salt and pepper,
(09:24):
that's it for a rub pork too. I've always played with my rub and
came up with a combination that hadsome spice, some sweetness. So you
know, there's there's a lot ofturbinado in there, which really just brings
on the brisket, all of it. So really, so I built the
rub for brisket because that's where mypassion was as this going back to the
hobby years, found out that itpaired well with pork. So we do
(09:48):
do some salt and pepper combinations theprime rib and then we do a tri
tip stake sandwich. So that isvery simple, very clean. So those
are the beef products, don't Youdon't need to get in the way of
beading. Just let it work.But I did want a little bit of
sweet on the front side, alittle bit of heat on the backside.
(10:09):
Nice, So I got some cayennein there, which I love cayenne.
It'll warm the palette, but itwill not gut right, yeah, And
if it's a little warm for you, there's nothing like a little sweet barbecue
sauce. We'll tone it down foryou, maybe a bache well you know,
well, and while we're talking aboutsauce. The hanover heat so good.
(10:30):
I've got it at home at alltimes in my refrigerator. Talk to
me about the hanover heat in particular. You've got four different sauces that I
know of, yep. But thehanover heat to me is just in the
the It's just perfect for me.So the three signature sauces that are on
every table. It starts with CountyRoad nineteen. It's the middle of the
road named after the highway out front. It's just a good middle of the
(10:52):
road sauce. I start with abase that I buy. We don't take
it too far off, so youmake it. You're making it. We're
making our sauces in house. Istart with them. I start with a
pre made sauce, and then wejust take it in different directions. So
you got a bass. Yeah,I have a base that I start with.
Where we really start to play iswhen we go to this heat that
(11:13):
he likes. That's five fire roastedpeppers made into a pepper jelly puri and
it just starts to bring him profile. And not all every pepper in there
is hot. You know. I'vehad complaints that it's not hot enough.
And that's why we made the sixo'clock sron where we brought in some ghost
pepper and Carolina reapers to take itto the next level. And then on
the sweet side, we use ashiner Bock beer and a brown sugar slurry
(11:35):
and make a sweet syrup. Goesthat gluten free thing. Yes, yeah,
that's the one that I'm guilty of, the same thing with my sauces.
It's like, if you're gluten free, stay away from the sweet.
It does have beer in it.But uh, they're great sauces, but
they all start from the same origin, which I think adds some consistency to
that, even though they do seemyou know, they seem different, but
(11:56):
they they all start in the samefamily. And then we have a we
have a very successful I use thesame pepper jelly from the heat to really
give a sweet spicy combination to ourbourbon sauce. That bourbon spot. You
know, we'll get some Portabello mushroomslater and that I'll have that bourbon dipping
sauce in it, and that'll startvery sweet like bourbon sauces do, but
then that'll finish with a little Arethese Texas style mushrooms. I took an
(12:22):
indulgence. I took an indulgence onthem. The rough cut up in Malacca
area always had them, okay,So I was like, I got to
have them at the restaurant. SoI went to every I'm a mushroom guy,
so I went to every supplier inthe state until I found the same
ones they were buying. But theyare fantastic, you know. For I
don't take any creative credit on themother than the bourbon sauce. You mentioned
(12:45):
the six o'clock siren siren. Whydon't you're in Hanover, explain what the
six o'clock siren? And Hanover meso all this tornado warning, Yes,
well you're not far off, sothe kids have to be home them.
I'm just taking a guess. Allthe sauces tie back to Hanover so County
Road nineteen, Middle of the Road, Crow River Suite, which we sat
on the banks of the Crow River, the Handover heat named after the town,
(13:09):
and then the six o'clock sirn ifyou're ever here outside at noon or
six o'clock at night waiting for atable, the fire station across the street
has a whistle that blows and it'sloud and it catches people's attention. So
I thought with the fire department andthe whistle, it was just a great
name. Why did they do thatat noon and sex? Really? Why
(13:31):
are they testing the alarm twice aday? Growing up in a small farm
town, almost all the small farmtowns did it back in the day.
Yeah, they let the farmers knowwhen lunch was time. There you go,
just kind of a reminder. Yeah, guys, wrap it up,
it's time for dinner. Talking aboutthese sauces, what have you learned over
the course of time? So Texasinspired, yep, But now you're executing
(13:52):
said plan in the Midwest, inMinnesota, for instance. So is there
anything that you've learned, Like youmentioned expanding to the six o'clock sirn some
customers want more heat. You haveyou learned anything from your customers in terms
of a trend of what maybe wouldbe normalcy or a standard in Texas that
is slowly but surely catching fire.I'm just interested in how whether it's charted.
(14:13):
Just looking for one good barbecue spotand he finds one here in Hannover.
The idea of barbecue evolving in thestate of Minnesota. Well, I'm
a traditionalist, and I kind oflike, there's a couple of places that
I've heard of in Texas where theydon't even allow sauce in the building.
Wow. And if I could getby with that, I would do it.
(14:33):
I'm not a sauce guy. Iwouldn't be good for revenue. So
we did the best we could withthe sauces. Knowing that, and everybody
has their sauce like Churchill Ravenbot theheat. The next person will come in
and buy four bottles of sweet.Some people are like, no, I
got to be right in the middle. So I think covering that spectrum of
that heat range or sweet range iskey. Because every the thing about barbecue
(14:56):
to me is you might like bigbore the next guy maybe does, and
barbecue subjective like I'm not a bigI'm not a big North Carolina barbecue that
that vinegary water based sauce because I'mnot a sauce guy anyway. I would
rather have just the meat and theseasonings shine through. So just because one
person likes this barbecue, they alwayssay what's the best that it's down to
(15:20):
the individual. It is it reallyis. And what I love about is
there is so much variety within thegenre of barbecue, like Memphis. Yeah,
Kansas City is way different than Memphis. Memphis is different than North South
Carolina. You know, it's kindof a cultural thing inside it is absolutely
cool. Thing in Minnesota is likewhen we talk about heat, you know,
the back in the day, youknow, not that long ago.
(15:41):
You know, if you mentioned youknow, any fire roasted chiliasy, you
nuts. We can't do that right, And we've really evolved to a place
that mild salsa, it's tater tothot dish. Let's stick to what we
know, right. So you know, I started my sauce business nine years
ago and we had those pepper onthe label, and people were like,
going, oh, no, it'sMinnesota hot. It's not that hot.
(16:03):
But back in the day it waslike I used to be a terrible sellar.
Now it's a good seller. Absolutely. People are scared off by I
grew up in a household and I'mnot exaggerating when I say this. The
spiciest thing I had growing up herein Minnesota was pepper. Yeah, and
yeah, people are I'm not kidding. We never had a taco sauce in
(16:25):
the house. We never had asalsa in the house. We never had
tabasco in the house, none ofthat. Yeah, we saw Malcolm Reid's
brisk and rub and it's it's heavyblack pepper. And I always have to
have warn Minnesotans. I'm like,it's heavy on the black pepper, which
you might confuse is spicy, youknow, be careful. Yep, there's
(16:48):
black pepper on that. But well, yeah, it's crazy. I'm a
big follower Aaron Franklin. I thinkwhat he's done is amazing. He does
brisket on an offset about as wellas a human can do it, in
my opinion, especially had large scale. But he's heavy on the black pepper,
and so we sell his pits.I'm very lucky to be a Franklin
dealer. We started doing our brisketclass on the Franklin Pitt and I'm telling
(17:11):
you, the closest, the bestTexas style brisket Eve ever made was made
on a Franklin Pitt. There wasa combination of things. I followed his
program and but there's something to everythinghe does. Is so the guy's an
engineer. Yeah he is for barbecue, but yeah he's he's something else.
Oh, there's the reason he's theonly James Beard Award winner in barbecue.
(17:33):
Yeah, you know, but Ilove it because he validated a couple of
things for me. When when hestarted talking about the woods that he liked,
he landed on Okay, crean cherry. Wow. So I was like,
all right, if the king likesaid, we must be doing something
right. Yeah. So I Ilove that place. I love what he
does. I like the way hecommunicates. Yeah. I like the way
(17:55):
he teaches, you know, becauseI I'll help anybody if you want to.
You want to learn how to cookone of these briskets at home,
I'll teach you. I'll tell youhow I do our ribs, because you're
still going to come here and eatwhen you don't have eighteen hours to make
the brisket, right, you know? So yeah, is that your timeline
on a brisket? Sixteen to eighteen? Probably? That's so we're on the
if we're on the fact, Nerdery, what what tim because that's such a
(18:19):
large bit back there, Yeah itis. It could be anywhere from one
eighty to two twenty five. Yeah, two thirty maybe? My god,
what do you mean? You're swingingtemperatures which all the same, which I
honestly think variation and temperature helps.I think there's something to be said of
this, and that's why I thinkoffsets do so well when you're looking for
(18:41):
just that next level of finish.I think sometimes the worst thing that happens
on an offset unless you're just crankingit way too much. But if you
walk away for a little too longand you come back and it's cooled a
little bit, all you did isjust cost yourself time. Yeah, you
didn't hurt anything, No, butI much it doesn't care. I would
much rather do that than to turnaround and all of a sudden, the
(19:03):
sun's beating on my smoker and it'sthree twenty five and I just made pot
roast. You know. It's like, yeah, brisket, just be patient.
Yeah, so absolutely, and don'toverthink it. Yeah, don't overthink
it. No. So, howdo you guys determine when a brisket is
done? Two? Three, twoof four in the flat? Okay,
so you're consistent about just nailing thetemperature. I don't let them have timers
in the pit. It's all Ilike it. It's all time and texture.
(19:27):
Yeah, I see you're feeling it. Time and texture. These guys
you know the in what are thetwo guys I met out there the pit?
Mass Andy and Joe? We wereout there. Yeah, so I'm
sure you have more. It soundslike, yeah, work over. My
brother was out there. He wasprobably trimming briskets right now. My brother
oversees the pit. He's the onethat started with me, and when we
first opened, it was just thetwo of us, so we would work.
(19:48):
Both would work about eighteen hours aday. And you guys are doing
Are you doing Texas style trim withthe point in the flat? So you're
yeah, he's cooking a hole.We're cooking whole packer briskets. Someday I
would like to get to the pointwhere we could make sausage on site.
We're not there yet. There's alot of trim that goes into the there's
another there's a lot of trim thatgoes away. My brother likes trimming them
(20:14):
up, probably a little more thanI do. But that's his gig and
I let him do it. Andit's working because that brisket trim means would
make really good sausage with some porkbutt. Are you doing anything with tallow?
No good? Yeah, but wethrow a lot of it away,
but those briskets get trimmed up,squared up. It just gives my staff
(20:37):
a nice starting point. Yeah,consistency helps those guys get better at what
they do. If you have atarget weight, yeah, we do fourteen
and ups. So sorry, canyou explain what that means? What is
itself? You can get a brisketif you're talking full packer, you can
be anywhere from probably the smallest twelvepounds eleven twelve pounds on a small brisket
that's been hacked up at the butcher, on a small steer, bigaus We've
(21:00):
I've seen this twenty nine pounds inthe storm, which is an insanely large
We do fo to source. It'sunbelievably big. Well, and my guess
is that was a very large steerthat came to market, got snuck in
on a little lot of them.Well, they snuck them in. It
could even been a bull I gotsnuck in. Wait a minute, Funny
things happen at the packing plant.But uh, which is why I like
(21:21):
to use Swanson Meats. A lotof locally sourced cattle. You know a
lot of Western Minnesota, eastern SouthDakota, you know dem Quota packing plant.
Very dem Quota is one of thevery few packing plants that we found
where we can get those fourteen andup packer briskets very consistent fourteen in up.
A lot of sixteens, a lotof eighteens, a lot of twenties
(21:44):
might see a twenty two hidden inthere. But when I see those briskets
come in very consistent in size,that means the farmer is doing his job.
They're bringing the cattle to market whenit's the right time. They're not
selling them because they have to.They're not selling them because they can't.
They do just do a really goodjob of control that flow. Yeah,
and that's key. So when whendid you get confident knowing that, hey,
(22:07):
I'm pretty damn good at one brisket, pretty good damn good at three.
Now I'm going to cook twenty fiveand you want to make it a
family affair, I mean, justthe ability to kind of scale that desize
and you're also kind of you're ridingthe vibe of the restaurant's growth at the
same time. So what was thatprocess like in terms of maximizing output and
increasing in that vein. You know, when you start something like this you
(22:30):
write a business plan and you youestimate on staff size and volume, and
then you open and hopefully it's atleast what you predicted and he's somewhat similar.
And it wasn't It never is,God laughs, you know, I
say no, Maybe, maybe COVIDfor us was a blessing because it did
force us to focus on different aspects, one segment at a time, even
(22:55):
though we were losing our minds whenit was happening. And it's easy now
in hindsight to look back at COVIDand said, how it all worked out,
But at the time, you're justwatching a six o'clock news report to
see what your business model is forthe next couple of weeks, and it's
challenging. You know, you've tooka second on your house, you liquidated
a four oh one k, youput everything you had into it, and
(23:17):
five weeks after you open, bang, we're doing takeout only and we don't
even know if we can do takeout. So it was a I think it
made it stronger. I think itpulled my team together. We missed out
on a lot of the COVID fundsbecause we didn't have twenty open yet.
Yeah, we didn't have twenty nineteenrevenue, So no matter how we tried
to shake it week, we didn'thave a twenty nine teen loss to show
(23:38):
to our revenue to show compared toYeah, I was I joked about that
at the time because we started aroundthe same time and everybody else that was
in business was getting, you know, the funds for COVID money, and
if you were in new business,I was joked that it's like, you
know, we'll let the infants die, but you know, and we were
brand new, and it was like, that's the PPP bit, by the
(23:59):
way, Yeah, yeh PPP.And then I will take my hat off
to Tom Emmer. We reached outto him directly and tried to explain that
I think there's a crack in thehelp in the bill and when they put
their restaurant revitalization. It was aquick calc but we did get a little
bit of help through that it wasn'tBut at the end of the day,
(24:19):
when it was all said and done, knowing that we weren't going to get
the help that other guys were getting, we kept the team together, we
worked, and we actually found growthin it. In the takeout world,
we learned a lot that you mightnot have without it. I think we
did, but at the time thatthere was no You can see that now,
(24:40):
but at the time you couldn't seethat. But we just we just
buckled down and did what we hadto do and we had a had strong
leadership. You know, if Idid one thing right to start this office,
I hired quality management. And whenyou hire quality management, you get
quality employees. And it just worked, you know, and human capital.
I did not have a lot ofseance in this Are we talking about your
(25:02):
wife? You know, she camelater, so she was the safeguard doll
that she had a she had avery uh secure corporate job that she was
very good at and she was asafety net. She made sure we had
you know, health insurance and yeah, she actually took a very large pay
(25:22):
cut to come over and work withus. Works that way. But now
she's here and we love having herhere and she's she's our rock. She's
she's uh, she manages the managersand she's a lot better at it than
I am. That's great, youknow, if there's a lot about your
relationship. Yeah, I'm in asimilar world. So if the building needs
to get built out, that way, I'm the guy, but if we
(25:42):
need to run what's going on here, it's her. You know. It's
like, I uh, I justfirefight. So I'm so impressed with you
know again Texas Inspired And at onepoint it's you know, you mentioned the
business plan, so how can Iget this done? Offer a good I'm
really good at cooking, so I'mgoing to handle that part of it and
(26:03):
I feel good about it. Founda spot and we're going to put some
cool stuff inside and people are goingto show up and they're gonna like the
food. But the expansion from abeer side, a bourbon side, like
Big Bore if you got to getout here to Hanover, this place is
so much more than just the barbecuenow, absolutely loving the barbecue, but
the live music vibe, the beervibe, Shiner beer in particular. Again,
(26:26):
when we're talking Texas Inspired, yougot a bourbon rack up there that
makes charge blush. Yeah, thewhole things really good, you know you
kind of but at some point youhad to expand beyond just being really damn
good at cooking, yep, andfinding those routes to it in revenue streams
but also flavor streams. Yes,can you talk a little bit about your
bourbon selection. It sounds like you'redoing something a lot of people you're like
(26:49):
your business aren't doing. Yeah,it started off host whiskey weekend here charged
don't help me. Paul came overand just started making demands. Yes,
exactly. We started with Johnson Brothers, and then we that's a distributor,
it's a it's a it's an alcoholdistributor in town. Johnson Brothers distributing,
and we started with them. Andthen there's a shortage of bourbon in Minnesota,
(27:14):
and there's a lot of stuff that'shard to get, and I quickly
realized I needed other distributors, whichin the beer world, you are told
where you have to buy from.So if you're in this area, they'll
tell you who you're gonna get yourmailer coups from, who you're gonna get
your boadweiser from. And there's territoriesin in the liquor world you can shop.
And so I brought on Breakthrough andthey've been a great partner. Johnson's
(27:34):
been great. Breakthrough has been great. We brought on Southern. They all
bring something different to the table,but that also creates this competition within the
distributors. So now you know,Breakthrough came on as the new distributor.
Well, then they introduced us toBrown Foreman, which is Jack Daniels that
brought down the Old Forester. Wedid a pairing dinner with Old Forester,
(27:56):
and I just thought that Stiller wasunderrepresented in Minnesota. I think it is
Old Forester for sure, great bourbon, a lot of different options, whereas
Kentucky, Ye, Louisville that wouldhave been my guess, yep, fantastic,
one of the oldest in the country. Obviously very well managed. Brown
(28:17):
Foreman is top notch. And thenwe had an opportunity to do a single
barrel, which was a little scarybecause you're committing to one hundred and thirty
one hundred and forty cases. Yeahthat much. No, no, take
that back. It's one hundred andeighty bottles, so about about thirty some
cases. But for a small moneythough, I mean, you know,
you know, if your Curdux,if your Haskells, you can do it
(28:40):
and split it up amongst your stores. But but we did it, and
we have a handful of signature cocktailsthat call for bourbon. And I just
told Rob, like, we'll we'llsell it neat, but well, we'll
incorporate in our signature cocktails and addsome value to those high dollar signature cocktails.
And the one behold. In thefirst five months, we went through
a whole single bar so I raisedmy hand and said, can I get
(29:00):
another? And four months later wewent through that and number four has been
shipped. So legend is that youguys, are you know, you in
charge or the bourbon guys? Butam I right? That you get to
go out and try a bunch ofbarrels and you get to choose one.
What we do is they usually shipus a bunch of samples, so the
rep will come out and we'll sampleokay, And usually what I'll do is
(29:22):
I'll I've kept a bunch of theoriginal so we can always go back to
home base, and then we tryto stay close in the profile that we
liked on barrel number one. Okay, But there there's a lot of variations
within those samples that come really andwow, they've they've all been in the
warehouse for different times. Not allbarrels. It's like brisket. Not all
(29:42):
of them come out of the warehouseat the same day. Are you in
on this is this here, Well, I don't get invited to the tasting,
which I didn't. I didn't knowthat I had been excluded from this.
Well, we'll have to have aguest time at a guest appearance.
You just did barrel four and that'snot even here yet. But when you're
ready for barrel five, if Iwant to be in on the tasting,
yeah, we can do that.That would be great. Yep. Old
(30:04):
Forester is great. And one ofthe things that I loved right away about
Big Boy is there are whiskeys thatin Minnesota are extremely hard to find,
and when you do find them,you're getting gouged. Not here, I
mean you can get Blanton's here.What do you charge for for for Blantons?
Don't quote me, but I thinkit's an eight dollars or no,
I mean eight or ten dollars.It's absurd. If I were to you
(30:26):
know, if I'm talking, ifI were in the suburbs or downtown,
the eight dollars, that eight dollarBlantons would be sixteen, eighteen, maybe
twenty twenty. Yeah, it's youknow, it's all over the place.
Price to so reasonably and maybe youknow, I don't know if it's I
take this as your philosophy. Really, my philosophy on it is if I
have it, it's available. IfI don't, then it's just not available.
(30:48):
You know, I can't control that. I just have a standard markup
and I don't gouge. If it'sallocated, that's the ideal. If the
bottle cost me thirty five, ifthe bottle cost me sixty, there's a
there's a standard markup, and that'sjust is what it is. Well,
and people, you know, ateight bucks, somebody will try it.
Yeah, at sixteen, I'm probablygonna eh, yeah, I think twice.
Well, yeah, And I wantto create value on everything we do.
(31:11):
You know, we've done menu increasesfor price. The burrito doesn't get
smaller. There's already an expectation ofwhat that burrito is supposed to look like.
And b if my cost has togo up to operate, then nice,
Sorry we have to raise price,but you already have an expectation right
on what that should look like.Nothing frustrates me more than to go to
like a national chain and the pricewent up and the portrait sie went down,
(31:33):
and I'm like, ok now,I'm disappointing it. And that is
happening in a big way. Yeah, in many box many cereals. Yeah.
Yeah, So I just always wantto make sure, no matter what
the price is, that there's stillsome value there. And that's just that's
philosophy. So you've hit on themenu, I want to hit you with
a couple of things. I mean, you've got great brisket, you've got
great ribs. I think there's anexpectation of those things. I want hit
(31:56):
you with some of the things thatyou do that are a little off from
standard barbecue places. You hit onthe burrito. The burrito is gigantic.
Tell people what's in the big boarburrito. Well, you get to pick
your meat and then it comes withpeppers and onions, that's the standard one,
and then stopped with cheese, ourcaesol sauce. But then there's also
(32:17):
the meat and mac which has ourhouse mac and cheese. Then you pick
your meat and then that has acheese sauce with Koheata cheese on top,
just in burrito form, in burritoform, in burrito form, Okay,
yeah, exactly. How does thatsound. It's it's massive. We have
a fat back mac and cheese,which is a plate of mac and cheese,
topped with once again chopped brisket,pulled pork, bacon bits, and
(32:42):
then a sunny side egg on top. How about that? How about that?
That's I'm just taking the masking,big of them big bores for people
that are carnivore, and it's acheat day. It is a cheat day.
Barbecue Sunday visually is amazing. Explainwhat comes in the mason jar.
(33:05):
Well, we don't put in themason jar anymore, oh, because you
can't source the mason jar properly becauseof the supply chain. So now it
comes on a platter. Oh.I loved I loved the mason jar.
It was a great look. Istole that idea from my aunt. We
were at a family get together andshe's like, I'm just gonna make a
barbecue Sunday. And she puts inpulled pork, puts in beans, puts
in mac and cheese, and Cole'slaw. So they they're all here,
(33:28):
they're all layered in the mason job. Yep. So we've got a buddy
that's now he's moved his place downin the Nashville area, yep, but
he he was doing the same thing. Yeah, I was like, I've
never seen that before. I thinkyou think you know they were down in
the southern part of the United States. I think I think, don't sell.
They do it all the time,just not a simplicity that a family
get together. Instead of having thisbig plate full of stuff, they just
(33:49):
load it and then just eat itlike a Sunday. But that was I
was smart enough to do that whenI had my kids were kids. Yeah,
here's your couple of minute. Butuh, well, you can't handle
that though, because it's the lunchtrain with separate little areas can't touch.
Yeah, now the food shouldn't touchalthough and obviously the big boards Sunday thy
Yeah, that's that's that was theunique thing. We've got a pretty good
(34:13):
line of text mex we do.You know, we do our street tacos.
Those those go over very well.I'm a big fan of the try
Tip steak sandwich. I get it. I get it every lunch I come
here. So I've been like,if I go to a Twins game,
it's it's the the Murray's Steak SandwichKRT at the Twins Stadium. Oh yeah,
And I wanted to be original.I didn't want to I'm not sure
(34:34):
if they do a top or abottom round, but whatever they do,
but they do it fantastic and it'sit's amazing, and I just wanted to
So I started thinking about my timesout in California and you'd see these carts
and they'd have a uh, trytip. So we so we par smoke
the try tip, we pull it, we refrigerate it, we shave it
cold. Them in the order itgoes into a zoo and then it goes
to the flat top and then itgets topped. I'd love to see that
(34:59):
process as we wrap up here,you know, whether it's the menu and
that's available on the website as well. Is there anything else maybe that we
missed that we need to know aboutBig Boar live music schedule as spring opens
up. Sounds like you're doing somework to enhance the the outdoor space.
Yep, as we close, Likewhat else should we should? We absolutely
(35:19):
know about your spot chat. Allthe patio is going to get enhanced this
spring. We're going to put aforty two by forty six foot outdoor pavilion
over the patio. Should add somereprieve from the you know, just a
little more ambiance in the evening,yeah, some fans some better lighting in
the evening, and then we doThursday nights, we do Mike Night.
There's always live music for that,and then I'm sure we'll uh, I
(35:42):
haven't booked anything because of that construction. There s twins, right or are
they hardly that will show up,Yeah, a lot of e twins,
a little bit of everything. Wework with a lot of different sponsors on
that, so we have everything fromthe Harley's, the Indians, and then
you know, Moon Motorsports is here, so you'll see BMW to Coatti's KTMS.
It's it's it's it's a fun gettogether. Switch starts early, usually
(36:05):
ends fairly early, you know,but a great get together every Thursday night,
weather permitting, during the summer.The first one will be June sixth
I have a Trent and Fletcher comingup from Oklahoma with the full band and
they'll send it off the right wayand get it started. And we'll have
some national acts as well this summer. It's super cool. Yeah, and
that's Hops and Hogs thanks to Chadfrom Big Boar Barbecue as well as Charge
(36:28):
and Aaron from Northern Fire. FollowHops and Hoggs on the x app via
hops hogs BBQ and subscribe to thepodcast on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever
you get your podcasts. Thanks forlistening. Time to get cooking.
Hey there, I'm Eric nord Quizfrom KFA and Radio. Welcome to Hops
and Hoggs, a podcast that turnslocal beer and local barbecue into one conversation.
This episode features Aaron from Northern FireGrilling and Barbecue Supply and KFA ends
Paul Charchian as we get to knowall about Big Boar Barbecue in Hanover,
(00:24):
Minnesota. Big Boar Barbecue and Hanover. First of all, this place is
amazing, and second of all,thank you so much, Chad Brink owner
cheers to you by the way theirhair. Thank you for having us,
Thanks for having Paul Charchion, AaronBordage Northern Fire Grilling and Barbecue Supply,
And it's part of this podcast.I don't know how many episodes, and
(00:45):
this is so fresh Hops and Hogs, so I don't know how many episodes
you've listened to. But really mywhole goal with this podcast, Chad,
is whether on the hop side,it's getting to understand the vision and the
beauty of building a brewery, buton the barbie side, specifically in Minnesota,
the challenges the vision and the beautyof building a barbecue restaurant such as
(01:07):
this start with the simple stuff gettingit out of the way, Chad,
when did you open Big Boar Barbecuehere in Hanover. Well, we were
fortunate enough to open five weeks beforeCOVID to the day, perfect timing,
right yep, January eleventh, twentytwenty. Sounds like we all have a
similar timeline, so it's kind ofcrazy. Yeah, And we've talked about
that before. Aaron here from NorthernFire, you know, opening up and
(01:30):
from an at home standpoint, whichkind of built me. I'm one of
those COVID kids as it pertains tobarbecue, Chad. Where I grew up,
you know, grilling and doing alittle bit of smoking, but like
prime rib in the oven on aholiday that was kind of the extent ribs
once in a while. But itwas when I had to eat a lot
of my food at home that Idecided to invest on the barbecue side.
(01:52):
And from your standpoint, I knowyou've been doing it a heck of a
lot longer than that. What inspiredyou to jump into the world of barbecue?
Probably well over twenty five thirty yearsago. I would always go down
and turkey hunt at my uncle's farmin Nebraska, and he had an old
fuel oil barrel smoker where you'd builda fire on one side and then cook
(02:13):
on the other side. And sowe would always come into town on Thursday
afternoon and I would start three packerbriskets. Back then I was three.
Well, I want to make surewe have leftovers. It's a long cook,
you know. When you took thatway, that's that's an eighteen twenty
four hour cook, low and slow, constantly moving them around. And then
(02:34):
I would always try something different,you know, so I would play with
rub combinations. Back then, Iwould do a lot of wet mops with
a so I would use shiner beeras a beer mop with some vinegar and
mops work great, but they arevery labor intensive, a lot of cost,
but they do it. How longgoes this? That would be all
(02:55):
early two thousands, you know,late nineties, early two thousands. Wildly
different time though, I mean notthat long ago. But at the same
time, the explosion and barbecue,I mean, you're the things you probably
had access to then compared to menow or quite a bit different. I
would get very much down there wasunique because a lot of hickory abundant,
(03:15):
but they had oak. I loveit. And then my uncle had you
know, peach trees on the farm, so I would use apple, I
would use peach, I would usecherry. Over the years, I've kind
of fallen in love with cherry.We do a lot of pork, but
I have a soft spot for forbeef, and pork really doesn't seem to
(03:36):
care. You. You can throwapple at it, you can throw cherry
at it, you can throw peachat it, you could throw a mulberry
at it. As long as you'regiving it a fruit wood, it seems
to be happy. Beef really seemsto respond well to cherry. And I
don't know, I don't know.It's color is awesome, The color is
awesome. The profile is just whatI like. So that's what we do
(03:57):
here. It's it's an oak basewith a hickory and cherry blend on there
on the front side of the cooksnice and then we go back to oak
primarily on the backside, you know. And sometimes because we are one hundred
percent wood fire, there's many timesit's a wrapped product and we are still
cooking with oak. Wow. Youknow, hickory and cherry are not native
here, no chad, so youknow, I guess I'm local. Cherry
(04:20):
but the hickory does get trucked infrom central United States and Pecon would be
Texas based, ye, And Igotta believe that's that's more expensive. And
there aren't a lot of other placesin town that are using hickory and cherry.
If they're doing barbecue, I hopethey're buying some hickory. It just
seems to have the right profile toget that that punch that you're looking for.
(04:42):
Yeah, I fell in love withoak. I was out in California
working and stopped into this little holein the wall Italian place, and I
had a ribbi that was cooked onan outdoor grill one hundred percent wood,
and it was all oak. Andthe profiles that came through with just that
oak was amazing. And I waslike, I asked him, like,
(05:04):
what kind of would are you using? She's like, that's red oak from
the farm like and I'm like,all right, I'm sold. Like it's
that's a good flavor profile on thatoak. Red oak is quite a bit
different than white oak. In myexperience, I feel I haven't found a
big difference, Like for the lightand the red. What about post oak?
You want to go down the PostOak road? Because I honestly think
(05:25):
oak is oak exactly. That's what. But if you talk to a text
and they'd say you have to usepost oak, but I would ask him
do you have any red or whiteoak down there? And they'd say no,
Yeah, I was joke. It'slike when I go to Texas,
I assume that all those fence polesyou see are eventually going to be barbecuemor
professor. Can I be the guywho asked what post oak is? Yeah,
I'm taking post malone he's from,but not post oak. Within the
(05:48):
oak, within the oak family,you have a bunch of subspecies. So
you got your white oak, yourred oak, a post oak. I
mean I would venture there's probably aton of subspecies of oak. Yeah,
around here we typically see a whiteokre at red oak, and it's pretty
evident which one you've got in yourhand when you have it. Well,
here's the cool thing about Big Boarhere in Hanover. It's not just a
(06:09):
barbecue restaurant. It's an arboretum.That's I think that's one of the best
parts of it. You know,charge you actually you consummated this this event
right here, this podcast, andyou know you were you in a weird
way to put it. But butit's it's nine to Dune on the feast,
and it's it's maybe two years agosomething like that. I forget exactly
(06:30):
when it happened. But when youget excited about something, you have to
share with the world. I do. That's one of your qualities. And
during the feast, you know,I don't remember, it wasn't a Hall
and Oates conversation. Something football related. Who knows the Beatles are terrible or
underrated, you know, whatever roadswe go down when we deviate from sports,
nine to Dune. But you wereso adamant about how awesome this place
(06:53):
was, the incredible experience you had, how good the food was. And
now a couple of years later,here I am. I'm saying, Charch
can you can you can you askChad if we can get a restaurant and
talk to him about his business?How'd that all come about? Well,
okay, I had complained for years, there's no reason Minnesota can't have good
barbecue. You know, there's there'snot a reason we can't, and we
(07:14):
didn't. You know, like myentire adult life, I've been waiting for
good barbecue to come to Minnesota,and I'd frequently ask him on social media,
you know, what do you likefor barbecue? And then I go
to these places I'm gonna I can'tsay, I won't say the name of
one, and I'm tempted to likemake some sign or something to tell you
like people would love, and I'dgo there and be like, Nah,
(07:35):
it's f Chad's. You'll know onethat has a barbecue restaurant, So it's
not us, right, And sothen people started get in my ear about
Big boor after after it opened,including my coast on Fantasy Football Weekly Matt
Harrison, who lives about a quartermile that way. You might be here
later. You might be here later, that's right, And so like I
(07:56):
was skeptical because you should be.No, you know, if any Minnesota
ever like, oh, I've gota great barbecue place, you know,
I'm automatically worried. This one livedup to the hype, so different on
its hold, a whole different planeof existence in every other barbecue I have
had here. And then it wasfortunate to get to know Chad and all
of the things that he's put,all the effort that he's put into the
(08:18):
building, the wood, the meat, you know when you hear all of
the effort, none of it's byaccident. It's all by design and totally
unique. There's almost no it's hardto even find Texas barbecue in the Twin
Cities, let alone good Texas barbecue. What Chad has done here here is
just crack the code in a waythat, honestly, I don't think to
(08:39):
the all the places I've tried inthe Twin Cities, nobody's done it at
this level. And it's been animportant thing for you here as you built
this Chad to whether it's researching,I mean, you know, market research
from an eating standpoint, from acooking standpoint, your knowledge not only of
how it's done in Texas, there'sa beer component into it that I'd like
(09:00):
to get to at some point aswell. Apparently some Boerman is here too.
But in some ways I've I know, I'm in Minnesota, but I've
walked into the lone Star state insome respects as it pertains to food well,
and that was the goal. Imean, I always say Texas inspired,
because I do do some things thatare clearly different than Texas. Ninety
percent of the time in Texas,you're going to see salt and pepper,
(09:24):
that's it for a rub pork too. I've always played with my rub and
came up with a combination that hadsome spice, some sweetness. So you
know, there's there's a lot ofturbinado in there, which really just brings
on the brisket, all of it. So really, so I built the
rub for brisket because that's where mypassion was as this going back to the
hobby years, found out that itpaired well with pork. So we do
(09:48):
do some salt and pepper combinations theprime rib and then we do a tri
tip stake sandwich. So that isvery simple, very clean. So those
are the beef products, don't Youdon't need to get in the way of
beading. Just let it work.But I did want a little bit of
sweet on the front side, alittle bit of heat on the backside.
(10:09):
Nice, So I got some cayennein there, which I love cayenne.
It'll warm the palette, but itwill not gut right, yeah, And
if it's a little warm for you, there's nothing like a little sweet barbecue
sauce. We'll tone it down foryou, maybe a bache well you know,
well, and while we're talking aboutsauce. The hanover heat so good.
(10:30):
I've got it at home at alltimes in my refrigerator. Talk to
me about the hanover heat in particular. You've got four different sauces that I
know of, yep. But thehanover heat to me is just in the
the It's just perfect for me.So the three signature sauces that are on
every table. It starts with CountyRoad nineteen. It's the middle of the
road named after the highway out front. It's just a good middle of the
(10:52):
road sauce. I start with abase that I buy. We don't take
it too far off, so youmake it. You're making it. We're
making our sauces in house. Istart with them. I start with a
pre made sauce, and then wejust take it in different directions. So
you got a bass. Yeah,I have a base that I start with.
Where we really start to play iswhen we go to this heat that
(11:13):
he likes. That's five fire roastedpeppers made into a pepper jelly puri and
it just starts to bring him profile. And not all every pepper in there
is hot. You know. I'vehad complaints that it's not hot enough.
And that's why we made the sixo'clock sron where we brought in some ghost
pepper and Carolina reapers to take itto the next level. And then on
the sweet side, we use ashiner Bock beer and a brown sugar slurry
(11:35):
and make a sweet syrup. Goesthat gluten free thing. Yes, yeah,
that's the one that I'm guilty of, the same thing with my sauces.
It's like, if you're gluten free, stay away from the sweet.
It does have beer in it.But uh, they're great sauces, but
they all start from the same origin, which I think adds some consistency to
that, even though they do seemyou know, they seem different, but
(11:56):
they they all start in the samefamily. And then we have a we
have a very successful I use thesame pepper jelly from the heat to really
give a sweet spicy combination to ourbourbon sauce. That bourbon spot. You
know, we'll get some Portabello mushroomslater and that I'll have that bourbon dipping
sauce in it, and that'll startvery sweet like bourbon sauces do, but
then that'll finish with a little Arethese Texas style mushrooms. I took an
(12:22):
indulgence. I took an indulgence onthem. The rough cut up in Malacca
area always had them, okay,So I was like, I got to
have them at the restaurant. SoI went to every I'm a mushroom guy,
so I went to every supplier inthe state until I found the same
ones they were buying. But theyare fantastic, you know. For I
don't take any creative credit on themother than the bourbon sauce. You mentioned
(12:45):
the six o'clock siren siren. Whydon't you're in Hanover, explain what the
six o'clock siren? And Hanover meso all this tornado warning, Yes,
well you're not far off, sothe kids have to be home them.
I'm just taking a guess. Allthe sauces tie back to Hanover so County
Road nineteen, Middle of the Road, Crow River Suite, which we sat
on the banks of the Crow River, the Handover heat named after the town,
(13:09):
and then the six o'clock sirn ifyou're ever here outside at noon or
six o'clock at night waiting for atable, the fire station across the street
has a whistle that blows and it'sloud and it catches people's attention. So
I thought with the fire department andthe whistle, it was just a great
name. Why did they do thatat noon and sex? Really? Why
(13:31):
are they testing the alarm twice aday? Growing up in a small farm
town, almost all the small farmtowns did it back in the day.
Yeah, they let the farmers knowwhen lunch was time. There you go,
just kind of a reminder. Yeah, guys, wrap it up,
it's time for dinner. Talking aboutthese sauces, what have you learned over
the course of time? So Texasinspired, yep, But now you're executing
(13:52):
said plan in the Midwest, inMinnesota, for instance. So is there
anything that you've learned, Like youmentioned expanding to the six o'clock sirn some
customers want more heat. You haveyou learned anything from your customers in terms
of a trend of what maybe wouldbe normalcy or a standard in Texas that
is slowly but surely catching fire.I'm just interested in how whether it's charted.
(14:13):
Just looking for one good barbecue spotand he finds one here in Hannover.
The idea of barbecue evolving in thestate of Minnesota. Well, I'm
a traditionalist, and I kind oflike, there's a couple of places that
I've heard of in Texas where theydon't even allow sauce in the building.
Wow. And if I could getby with that, I would do it.
(14:33):
I'm not a sauce guy. Iwouldn't be good for revenue. So
we did the best we could withthe sauces. Knowing that, and everybody
has their sauce like Churchill Ravenbot theheat. The next person will come in
and buy four bottles of sweet.Some people are like, no, I
got to be right in the middle. So I think covering that spectrum of
that heat range or sweet range iskey. Because every the thing about barbecue
(14:56):
to me is you might like bigbore the next guy maybe does, and
barbecue subjective like I'm not a bigI'm not a big North Carolina barbecue that
that vinegary water based sauce because I'mnot a sauce guy anyway. I would
rather have just the meat and theseasonings shine through. So just because one
person likes this barbecue, they alwayssay what's the best that it's down to
(15:20):
the individual. It is it reallyis. And what I love about is
there is so much variety within thegenre of barbecue, like Memphis. Yeah,
Kansas City is way different than Memphis. Memphis is different than North South
Carolina. You know, it's kindof a cultural thing inside it is absolutely
cool. Thing in Minnesota is likewhen we talk about heat, you know,
the back in the day, youknow, not that long ago.
(15:41):
You know, if you mentioned youknow, any fire roasted chiliasy, you
nuts. We can't do that right, And we've really evolved to a place
that mild salsa, it's tater tothot dish. Let's stick to what we
know, right. So you know, I started my sauce business nine years
ago and we had those pepper onthe label, and people were like,
going, oh, no, it'sMinnesota hot. It's not that hot.
(16:03):
But back in the day it waslike I used to be a terrible sellar.
Now it's a good seller. Absolutely. People are scared off by I
grew up in a household and I'mnot exaggerating when I say this. The
spiciest thing I had growing up herein Minnesota was pepper. Yeah, and
yeah, people are I'm not kidding. We never had a taco sauce in
(16:25):
the house. We never had asalsa in the house. We never had
tabasco in the house, none ofthat. Yeah, we saw Malcolm Reid's
brisk and rub and it's it's heavyblack pepper. And I always have to
have warn Minnesotans. I'm like,it's heavy on the black pepper, which
you might confuse is spicy, youknow, be careful. Yep, there's
(16:48):
black pepper on that. But well, yeah, it's crazy. I'm a
big follower Aaron Franklin. I thinkwhat he's done is amazing. He does
brisket on an offset about as wellas a human can do it, in
my opinion, especially had large scale. But he's heavy on the black pepper,
and so we sell his pits.I'm very lucky to be a Franklin
dealer. We started doing our brisketclass on the Franklin Pitt and I'm telling
(17:11):
you, the closest, the bestTexas style brisket Eve ever made was made
on a Franklin Pitt. There wasa combination of things. I followed his
program and but there's something to everythinghe does. Is so the guy's an
engineer. Yeah he is for barbecue, but yeah he's he's something else.
Oh, there's the reason he's theonly James Beard Award winner in barbecue.
(17:33):
Yeah, you know, but Ilove it because he validated a couple of
things for me. When when hestarted talking about the woods that he liked,
he landed on Okay, crean cherry. Wow. So I was like,
all right, if the king likesaid, we must be doing something
right. Yeah. So I Ilove that place. I love what he
does. I like the way hecommunicates. Yeah. I like the way
(17:55):
he teaches, you know, becauseI I'll help anybody if you want to.
You want to learn how to cookone of these briskets at home,
I'll teach you. I'll tell youhow I do our ribs, because you're
still going to come here and eatwhen you don't have eighteen hours to make
the brisket, right, you know? So yeah, is that your timeline
on a brisket? Sixteen to eighteen? Probably? That's so we're on the
if we're on the fact, Nerdery, what what tim because that's such a
(18:19):
large bit back there, Yeah itis. It could be anywhere from one
eighty to two twenty five. Yeah, two thirty maybe? My god,
what do you mean? You're swingingtemperatures which all the same, which I
honestly think variation and temperature helps.I think there's something to be said of
this, and that's why I thinkoffsets do so well when you're looking for
(18:41):
just that next level of finish.I think sometimes the worst thing that happens
on an offset unless you're just crankingit way too much. But if you
walk away for a little too longand you come back and it's cooled a
little bit, all you did isjust cost yourself time. Yeah, you
didn't hurt anything, No, butI much it doesn't care. I would
much rather do that than to turnaround and all of a sudden, the
(19:03):
sun's beating on my smoker and it'sthree twenty five and I just made pot
roast. You know. It's like, yeah, brisket, just be patient.
Yeah, so absolutely, and don'toverthink it. Yeah, don't overthink
it. No. So, howdo you guys determine when a brisket is
done? Two? Three, twoof four in the flat? Okay,
so you're consistent about just nailing thetemperature. I don't let them have timers
in the pit. It's all Ilike it. It's all time and texture.
(19:27):
Yeah, I see you're feeling it. Time and texture. These guys
you know the in what are thetwo guys I met out there the pit?
Mass Andy and Joe? We wereout there. Yeah, so I'm
sure you have more. It soundslike, yeah, work over. My
brother was out there. He wasprobably trimming briskets right now. My brother
oversees the pit. He's the onethat started with me, and when we
first opened, it was just thetwo of us, so we would work.
(19:48):
Both would work about eighteen hours aday. And you guys are doing
Are you doing Texas style trim withthe point in the flat? So you're
yeah, he's cooking a hole.We're cooking whole packer briskets. Someday I
would like to get to the pointwhere we could make sausage on site.
We're not there yet. There's alot of trim that goes into the there's
another there's a lot of trim thatgoes away. My brother likes trimming them
(20:14):
up, probably a little more thanI do. But that's his gig and
I let him do it. Andit's working because that brisket trim means would
make really good sausage with some porkbutt. Are you doing anything with tallow?
No good? Yeah, but wethrow a lot of it away,
but those briskets get trimmed up,squared up. It just gives my staff
(20:37):
a nice starting point. Yeah,consistency helps those guys get better at what
they do. If you have atarget weight, yeah, we do fourteen
and ups. So sorry, canyou explain what that means? What is
itself? You can get a brisketif you're talking full packer, you can
be anywhere from probably the smallest twelvepounds eleven twelve pounds on a small brisket
that's been hacked up at the butcher, on a small steer, bigaus We've
(21:00):
I've seen this twenty nine pounds inthe storm, which is an insanely large
We do fo to source. It'sunbelievably big. Well, and my guess
is that was a very large steerthat came to market, got snuck in
on a little lot of them.Well, they snuck them in. It
could even been a bull I gotsnuck in. Wait a minute, Funny
things happen at the packing plant.But uh, which is why I like
(21:21):
to use Swanson Meats. A lotof locally sourced cattle. You know a
lot of Western Minnesota, eastern SouthDakota, you know dem Quota packing plant.
Very dem Quota is one of thevery few packing plants that we found
where we can get those fourteen andup packer briskets very consistent fourteen in up.
A lot of sixteens, a lotof eighteens, a lot of twenties
(21:44):
might see a twenty two hidden inthere. But when I see those briskets
come in very consistent in size,that means the farmer is doing his job.
They're bringing the cattle to market whenit's the right time. They're not
selling them because they have to.They're not selling them because they can't.
They do just do a really goodjob of control that flow. Yeah,
and that's key. So when whendid you get confident knowing that, hey,
(22:07):
I'm pretty damn good at one brisket, pretty good damn good at three.
Now I'm going to cook twenty fiveand you want to make it a
family affair, I mean, justthe ability to kind of scale that desize
and you're also kind of you're ridingthe vibe of the restaurant's growth at the
same time. So what was thatprocess like in terms of maximizing output and
increasing in that vein. You know, when you start something like this you
(22:30):
write a business plan and you youestimate on staff size and volume, and
then you open and hopefully it's atleast what you predicted and he's somewhat similar.
And it wasn't It never is,God laughs, you know, I
say no, Maybe, maybe COVIDfor us was a blessing because it did
force us to focus on different aspects, one segment at a time, even
(22:55):
though we were losing our minds whenit was happening. And it's easy now
in hindsight to look back at COVIDand said, how it all worked out,
But at the time, you're justwatching a six o'clock news report to
see what your business model is forthe next couple of weeks, and it's
challenging. You know, you've tooka second on your house, you liquidated
a four oh one k, youput everything you had into it, and
(23:17):
five weeks after you open, bang, we're doing takeout only and we don't
even know if we can do takeout. So it was a I think it
made it stronger. I think itpulled my team together. We missed out
on a lot of the COVID fundsbecause we didn't have twenty open yet.
Yeah, we didn't have twenty nineteenrevenue, So no matter how we tried
to shake it week, we didn'thave a twenty nine teen loss to show
(23:38):
to our revenue to show compared toYeah, I was I joked about that
at the time because we started aroundthe same time and everybody else that was
in business was getting, you know, the funds for COVID money, and
if you were in new business,I was joked that it's like, you
know, we'll let the infants die, but you know, and we were
brand new, and it was like, that's the PPP bit, by the
(23:59):
way, Yeah, yeh PPP.And then I will take my hat off
to Tom Emmer. We reached outto him directly and tried to explain that
I think there's a crack in thehelp in the bill and when they put
their restaurant revitalization. It was aquick calc but we did get a little
bit of help through that it wasn'tBut at the end of the day,
(24:19):
when it was all said and done, knowing that we weren't going to get
the help that other guys were getting, we kept the team together, we
worked, and we actually found growthin it. In the takeout world,
we learned a lot that you mightnot have without it. I think we
did, but at the time thatthere was no You can see that now,
(24:40):
but at the time you couldn't seethat. But we just we just
buckled down and did what we hadto do and we had a had strong
leadership. You know, if Idid one thing right to start this office,
I hired quality management. And whenyou hire quality management, you get
quality employees. And it just worked, you know, and human capital.
I did not have a lot ofseance in this Are we talking about your
(25:02):
wife? You know, she camelater, so she was the safeguard doll
that she had a she had avery uh secure corporate job that she was
very good at and she was asafety net. She made sure we had
you know, health insurance and yeah, she actually took a very large pay
(25:22):
cut to come over and work withus. Works that way. But now
she's here and we love having herhere and she's she's our rock. She's
she's uh, she manages the managersand she's a lot better at it than
I am. That's great, youknow, if there's a lot about your
relationship. Yeah, I'm in asimilar world. So if the building needs
to get built out, that way, I'm the guy, but if we
(25:42):
need to run what's going on here, it's her. You know. It's
like, I uh, I justfirefight. So I'm so impressed with you
know again Texas Inspired And at onepoint it's you know, you mentioned the
business plan, so how can Iget this done? Offer a good I'm
really good at cooking, so I'mgoing to handle that part of it and
(26:03):
I feel good about it. Founda spot and we're going to put some
cool stuff inside and people are goingto show up and they're gonna like the
food. But the expansion from abeer side, a bourbon side, like
Big Bore if you got to getout here to Hanover, this place is
so much more than just the barbecuenow, absolutely loving the barbecue, but
the live music vibe, the beervibe, Shiner beer in particular. Again,
(26:26):
when we're talking Texas Inspired, yougot a bourbon rack up there that
makes charge blush. Yeah, thewhole things really good, you know you
kind of but at some point youhad to expand beyond just being really damn
good at cooking, yep, andfinding those routes to it in revenue streams
but also flavor streams. Yes,can you talk a little bit about your
bourbon selection. It sounds like you'redoing something a lot of people you're like
(26:49):
your business aren't doing. Yeah,it started off host whiskey weekend here charged
don't help me. Paul came overand just started making demands. Yes,
exactly. We started with Johnson Brothers, and then we that's a distributor,
it's a it's a it's an alcoholdistributor in town. Johnson Brothers distributing,
and we started with them. Andthen there's a shortage of bourbon in Minnesota,
(27:14):
and there's a lot of stuff that'shard to get, and I quickly
realized I needed other distributors, whichin the beer world, you are told
where you have to buy from.So if you're in this area, they'll
tell you who you're gonna get yourmailer coups from, who you're gonna get
your boadweiser from. And there's territoriesin in the liquor world you can shop.
And so I brought on Breakthrough andthey've been a great partner. Johnson's
(27:34):
been great. Breakthrough has been great. We brought on Southern. They all
bring something different to the table,but that also creates this competition within the
distributors. So now you know,Breakthrough came on as the new distributor.
Well, then they introduced us toBrown Foreman, which is Jack Daniels that
brought down the Old Forester. Wedid a pairing dinner with Old Forester,
(27:56):
and I just thought that Stiller wasunderrepresented in Minnesota. I think it is
Old Forester for sure, great bourbon, a lot of different options, whereas
Kentucky, Ye, Louisville that wouldhave been my guess, yep, fantastic,
one of the oldest in the country. Obviously very well managed. Brown
(28:17):
Foreman is top notch. And thenwe had an opportunity to do a single
barrel, which was a little scarybecause you're committing to one hundred and thirty
one hundred and forty cases. Yeahthat much. No, no, take
that back. It's one hundred andeighty bottles, so about about thirty some
cases. But for a small moneythough, I mean, you know,
you know, if your Curdux,if your Haskells, you can do it
(28:40):
and split it up amongst your stores. But but we did it, and
we have a handful of signature cocktailsthat call for bourbon. And I just
told Rob, like, we'll we'llsell it neat, but well, we'll
incorporate in our signature cocktails and addsome value to those high dollar signature cocktails.
And the one behold. In thefirst five months, we went through
a whole single bar so I raisedmy hand and said, can I get
(29:00):
another? And four months later wewent through that and number four has been
shipped. So legend is that youguys, are you know, you in
charge or the bourbon guys? Butam I right? That you get to
go out and try a bunch ofbarrels and you get to choose one.
What we do is they usually shipus a bunch of samples, so the
rep will come out and we'll sampleokay, And usually what I'll do is
(29:22):
I'll I've kept a bunch of theoriginal so we can always go back to
home base, and then we tryto stay close in the profile that we
liked on barrel number one. Okay, But there there's a lot of variations
within those samples that come really andwow, they've they've all been in the
warehouse for different times. Not allbarrels. It's like brisket. Not all
(29:42):
of them come out of the warehouseat the same day. Are you in
on this is this here, Well, I don't get invited to the tasting,
which I didn't. I didn't knowthat I had been excluded from this.
Well, we'll have to have aguest time at a guest appearance.
You just did barrel four and that'snot even here yet. But when you're
ready for barrel five, if Iwant to be in on the tasting,
yeah, we can do that.That would be great. Yep. Old
(30:04):
Forester is great. And one ofthe things that I loved right away about
Big Boy is there are whiskeys thatin Minnesota are extremely hard to find,
and when you do find them,you're getting gouged. Not here, I
mean you can get Blanton's here.What do you charge for for for Blantons?
Don't quote me, but I thinkit's an eight dollars or no,
I mean eight or ten dollars.It's absurd. If I were to you
(30:26):
know, if I'm talking, ifI were in the suburbs or downtown,
the eight dollars, that eight dollarBlantons would be sixteen, eighteen, maybe
twenty twenty. Yeah, it's youknow, it's all over the place.
Price to so reasonably and maybe youknow, I don't know if it's I
take this as your philosophy. Really, my philosophy on it is if I
have it, it's available. IfI don't, then it's just not available.
(30:48):
You know, I can't control that. I just have a standard markup
and I don't gouge. If it'sallocated, that's the ideal. If the
bottle cost me thirty five, ifthe bottle cost me sixty, there's a
there's a standard markup, and that'sjust is what it is. Well,
and people, you know, ateight bucks, somebody will try it.
Yeah, at sixteen, I'm probablygonna eh, yeah, I think twice.
Well, yeah, And I wantto create value on everything we do.
(31:11):
You know, we've done menu increasesfor price. The burrito doesn't get
smaller. There's already an expectation ofwhat that burrito is supposed to look like.
And b if my cost has togo up to operate, then nice,
Sorry we have to raise price,but you already have an expectation right
on what that should look like.Nothing frustrates me more than to go to
like a national chain and the pricewent up and the portrait sie went down,
(31:33):
and I'm like, ok now,I'm disappointing it. And that is
happening in a big way. Yeah, in many box many cereals. Yeah.
Yeah, So I just always wantto make sure, no matter what
the price is, that there's stillsome value there. And that's just that's
philosophy. So you've hit on themenu, I want to hit you with
a couple of things. I mean, you've got great brisket, you've got
great ribs. I think there's anexpectation of those things. I want hit
(31:56):
you with some of the things thatyou do that are a little off from
standard barbecue places. You hit onthe burrito. The burrito is gigantic.
Tell people what's in the big boarburrito. Well, you get to pick
your meat and then it comes withpeppers and onions, that's the standard one,
and then stopped with cheese, ourcaesol sauce. But then there's also
(32:17):
the meat and mac which has ourhouse mac and cheese. Then you pick
your meat and then that has acheese sauce with Koheata cheese on top,
just in burrito form, in burritoform, in burrito form, Okay,
yeah, exactly. How does thatsound. It's it's massive. We have
a fat back mac and cheese,which is a plate of mac and cheese,
topped with once again chopped brisket,pulled pork, bacon bits, and
(32:42):
then a sunny side egg on top. How about that? How about that?
That's I'm just taking the masking,big of them big bores for people
that are carnivore, and it's acheat day. It is a cheat day.
Barbecue Sunday visually is amazing. Explainwhat comes in the mason jar.
(33:05):
Well, we don't put in themason jar anymore, oh, because you
can't source the mason jar properly becauseof the supply chain. So now it
comes on a platter. Oh.I loved I loved the mason jar.
It was a great look. Istole that idea from my aunt. We
were at a family get together andshe's like, I'm just gonna make a
barbecue Sunday. And she puts inpulled pork, puts in beans, puts
in mac and cheese, and Cole'slaw. So they they're all here,
(33:28):
they're all layered in the mason job. Yep. So we've got a buddy
that's now he's moved his place downin the Nashville area, yep, but
he he was doing the same thing. Yeah, I was like, I've
never seen that before. I thinkyou think you know they were down in
the southern part of the United States. I think I think, don't sell.
They do it all the time,just not a simplicity that a family
get together. Instead of having thisbig plate full of stuff, they just
(33:49):
load it and then just eat itlike a Sunday. But that was I
was smart enough to do that whenI had my kids were kids. Yeah,
here's your couple of minute. Butuh, well, you can't handle
that though, because it's the lunchtrain with separate little areas can't touch.
Yeah, now the food shouldn't touchalthough and obviously the big boards Sunday thy
Yeah, that's that's that was theunique thing. We've got a pretty good
(34:13):
line of text mex we do.You know, we do our street tacos.
Those those go over very well.I'm a big fan of the try
Tip steak sandwich. I get it. I get it every lunch I come
here. So I've been like,if I go to a Twins game,
it's it's the the Murray's Steak SandwichKRT at the Twins Stadium. Oh yeah,
And I wanted to be original.I didn't want to I'm not sure
(34:34):
if they do a top or abottom round, but whatever they do,
but they do it fantastic and it'sit's amazing, and I just wanted to
So I started thinking about my timesout in California and you'd see these carts
and they'd have a uh, trytip. So we so we par smoke
the try tip, we pull it, we refrigerate it, we shave it
cold. Them in the order itgoes into a zoo and then it goes
to the flat top and then itgets topped. I'd love to see that
(34:59):
process as we wrap up here,you know, whether it's the menu and
that's available on the website as well. Is there anything else maybe that we
missed that we need to know aboutBig Boar live music schedule as spring opens
up. Sounds like you're doing somework to enhance the the outdoor space.
Yep, as we close, Likewhat else should we should? We absolutely
(35:19):
know about your spot chat. Allthe patio is going to get enhanced this
spring. We're going to put aforty two by forty six foot outdoor pavilion
over the patio. Should add somereprieve from the you know, just a
little more ambiance in the evening,yeah, some fans some better lighting in
the evening, and then we doThursday nights, we do Mike Night.
There's always live music for that,and then I'm sure we'll uh, I
(35:42):
haven't booked anything because of that construction. There s twins, right or are
they hardly that will show up,Yeah, a lot of e twins,
a little bit of everything. Wework with a lot of different sponsors on
that, so we have everything fromthe Harley's, the Indians, and then
you know, Moon Motorsports is here, so you'll see BMW to Coatti's KTMS.
It's it's it's it's a fun gettogether. Switch starts early, usually
(36:05):
ends fairly early, you know,but a great get together every Thursday night,
weather permitting, during the summer.The first one will be June sixth
I have a Trent and Fletcher comingup from Oklahoma with the full band and
they'll send it off the right wayand get it started. And we'll have
some national acts as well this summer. It's super cool. Yeah, and
that's Hops and Hogs thanks to Chadfrom Big Boar Barbecue as well as Charge
(36:28):
and Aaron from Northern Fire. FollowHops and Hoggs on the x app via
hops hogs BBQ and subscribe to thepodcast on the free iHeartRadio app or wherever
you get your podcasts. Thanks forlistening. Time to get cooking.
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