Sous vide meets Retained Heat Cooking

Sous vide immersion cooking in a cooler:

• http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/04/cook-your-meat-in-a-beer-cooler-the-worlds-best-sous-vide-hack.html 

Sous vide immersion cooking basic reference:

• http://www.douglasbaldwin.com/sous-vide.html 
• http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/10/understanding-sous-vide-cooking-heston-blumenthal.html

Sous vide recipe(s) adaptable to a cooler:

• http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/04/sous-vide-basics-low-temperature-chicken.html

Retained heat cooking

Reference pages for Retained heat cooking  AKA hay box, fireless, thermal or wonderbox cooking.

http://thermalcooker.wordpress.com/

"Norwegian" self-acting cooker (Norwegian in name only):
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rnfirstbite/hayboxes/4764768

This appears to be the first commercially made RHC.

AB5M olive oil dough

No knead pizza dough

Olive Oil Dough from Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day:
3 1/4 cups lukewarm water (26 oz)
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon yeast
1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons Kosher salt (2 tsp table salt)
2 tablespoons sugar
7 1/2 cups (37.5 oz) unbleached all-purpose flour


Half batch:

13 oz water
2 T olive oil
1.5 tsp yeast
1 tsp table salt
1 T sugar
18.75 oz flour

AB5M weights

AB5M weight equivalents for their recipes.

1 cup white flour = 5 oz (140 grams)
1 cup wheat flour = 4.5 oz (130 grams)
1 cup water = 8 oz (225 grams)

Science behind the smoker stall

The smoker stall appears to be a result largely of evaporation, not fat rendering or collagen breakdown. This leads to wrapping meat at 150-160 degrees F. and letting the meat come up to temperature. For pork shoulder that would be from 160-170 for slicing or up to 203 for pulling.
http://www.amazingribs.com/tips_and_technique/the_stall.html

I had a pork shoulder in a Weber kettle with the intent to slice the first half and pull the second. The meat was wrapped at 160 and sliced at 173. The temperature dropped 10 degrees while slicing and rewrapping.  I should have cut the section to slice and wrapped it separately.

I know I have read this before, and I wrapped the meat before I re-read it. I had wrapped meat to bring it in to finish in the oven, but hadn't done it when finishing outside. You get a very different finish this way. Less crusty, more moist.

I finished it outside because it was fairly warm here and I had a lot of fuel left from a hybrid snake/Minion method smoke with 4 fire bricks (2 on top 2 on the side.. I had over 6 hours of heat without much adjustment.

Skillet Focaccia bread

http://www.somethingedible.com/index.php/recipes/card/three_herb_cast_iron_skillet_focaccia

Coffee

The Costco coffee beans I use are roughly 25 g per 1/4 cup or 6-7 g per Tablespoon.
1 US cup = 236.5 ml
2 tbs = 1 coffee measure = 1 fl oz is approximately 12-13 g coffee on average.
Most coffee literature assumes 6 oz per cup. Some assume 5 oz. This generally refers to water before brewing with some lost to the grounds.

Mr Coffee 12 cup measure = 60 oz (by weight even though their documents claim volume. It is 57.5 fluid ounces) or 1700 ml for a 5 (actually 4.8) oz cup or 142 ml. They recommend 9 tablespoons at 5 g per tablespoon (their estimate) for 12 cups with amounts scaled linearly down to 3 T for 4 cups. That would be 45 grams for 1700 ml or 26 g per liter.

I see the Specialty Coffee Association of America standard is 10 coffee g per 6 oz (177 ml) water (56 g /liter.) From www.thecoffeefaq.com

A standard "cup" of coffee uses six ounces (177 ml) of water. The SCAA's standard measure of ground coffee for this quantity of water is 10 grams (+/- 1 gram) or slightly over a third of an ounce (or, simply, two tablespoons). Since the ground coffee will absorb water, you will be left with approximately five and one-third ounces of coffee. 

The author doesn't specify the brewing method. The assumption is that the coffee absorbs twice its weight in water, leaving 155-160 g per "cup".

With 2 tablespoons coffee (10 g) per 6 oz cup (177 ml) I get 100 g for 60 oz or 1 cup of ground beans. Roughly 55 grams per liter. I should lose 200 g of water to the grounds for 1500 ml or about 6 and 1/3 US 8 fl oz cups. (50.7 oz).

We have been using about 50 g per 1700 ml.  100 g is very strong, drinkable but I think it's better diluted. Diluted it tastes a little better than 50 g. I'm using 67 g now and it seems a reasonable compromise.