British BBQ Society Forums

I've never rated beer can chicken since the first time I had one. Sure it makes for some BBQ theatre if you've not seen it before but the only way I've got a beer taste is by using the contents of the can mixed in with the juices of the chicken as a basis for gravy.

It's just a vertical roaster. Obviously an actual vertical roaster is better than a beer can.

If you want to spatchcock your chicken, you can do that, but you will lose the juices and it doesn't look as good.

If you want to rotisserie your chicken, you can do that, but you need £100 for the rotisserie.

But otherwise a vertical roaster is a very good way to cook a chicken. The beer can, not so much.

I can plonk a chicken on here:


stick it on the grill and it's done.

And I've got a couple of ounces of chicken juices in the roaster to use as well.

I don't see anything in the article there that persuades me that, short of buying the rotisserie, I can get better results than I achieve on my 'beer can' (which isn't a beer can and which I fill with water, not beer).

I use a Spanek verticle roaster (http://spanek.com/roaster/roasters.php) and have done for 10-15 years and never had a dry chicken or turkey in the oven or on a bbq. I've had some success with using wine and herbs in a can rather than beer, I don't think beer has enough of a flavour hit IMO

It's not particularly the taste - it helps keep the chicken moist.

I've never had 'beer can' chicken (actually wine, and done on the Weber as shown in the picture above) where the meat is stringy and dried out. Always very moist.

Steve W

I think cooking a chicken beer can style (vertical) can deliver a good chicken. My issue with beer can chicken is that it doesn't deliver what you think it will - ie something that has the taste of the liquid that you've used and that's always been a disappointment for me.

RobinC wrote:I think cooking a chicken beer can style (vertical) can deliver a good chicken. My issue with beer can chicken is that it doesn't deliver what you think it will - ie something that has the taste of the liquid that you've used and that's always been a disappointment for me.

I did one yesterday and put water in it. No disappointment there....

But did it taste of hard water or soft water?

Did 2 side by side yesterday, 1 beer can, 1 on a vertical holder.

The none beer can one was as good if not better than the other.

I'm sure this has been posted up before http://www.nakedwhiz.com/beercanchicken.htm

The trouble with those links is that none of the experiments is particularly scientific.

For example, on the second link it found that the Weber boiled the beer away very easily (How Hot Does The Beer Get? Part 2). It also showed that you get some nice steam coming off boiling water at somewhere between 170 & 185 degrees F (Experiment 1 -- How Hot Does The Beer Get?). But then they note in one of the later experiments that the temperature only got up to 200 degrees F. Hold on - I thought it said about 180 was fine?

Strange as well that, given the excellent results with the Weber in How Hot Does The Beer Get? Part 2, they didn't then stick a chicken on the Weber. Instead they do an experiment with a full beer can vs an empty beer can, despite already having shown that a beer can is not a good idea anyway.

And finally they do a taste test with just 1 (yup, ONE) taster.

One thing I can say for sure is that fill my Weber with wine, it's only about half full when I finish, and the chicken is very moist.

If these sites are going to conduct 'scientific' tests, I wish they'd be more scientific about it, because the way they shift the goal posts mid-experiment is ridiculous.

Steve W