Beer Can Chicken Stands

Here is a link to our beer can chicken blog post with video.

Beer Butt or Beer Can Chicken Recipe:

Ingredients:

1 Chicken Whole

Your Favorite Dry Rub or Salt and Pepper

Butter

6 Pack of Beer (1/2 can for the chicken 5 1/2 for you)

If you haven’t cooked chicken this way yet, you are missing a real treat!Basically you take a beer can (feel free to substitute a pop can) 1/2 full of liquid, place it in a large open end of the chicken and cook it standing on end. The chicken cooks from the inside out, when cooked properly, the skin will be crispy and inside of the chicken will be tender and juicy.

The prep is simply rubbing your chicken skin with butter. This will get you an extra crispy skin. Next hit it with your seasonings or dry rub, get under the skin when possible. Place the chicken on your stand and take out to the grill.

I highly recommend using a chicken stand here. There are many beer butt chicken stands on the market. If you don’t use a stand, the chicken will be unstable on the grill. Place the beer can in the holder and slide the chicken onto the can. If you want the can and stand may be sprayed with PAM for grilling (Never use Pam on your grill grates). I have never had one stick to the inside of the chicken but you never know. I suggest placing a pan under where the chicken is going to stand on your grill to collect the drippings. This will save you a lot of cleanup and/or flare up in the future.

Place the chicken on the stand over indirect medium heat. If the heat is coming from one side of your grill, you may need to turn the chicken at some point. Stick your thermometer in the chicken (this is perfect use for a remote thermometer), and then you can just walk away. It’ll tell you when it’s done; if you don’t have a remote or external thermometer I would suggest checking the temperature after about an hour to an hour and a half and then about every 15 minutes to half hour after that.

Even with a drip pan under the chicken. I suggest keeping an eye on your grill, because if these juices dump you are going to have a three-alarm fire on your hands and some crispy chicken.

Beer substitutes: For those who do not want to use a beer can any pop can will do, simply fill the can half full of water, and add some garlic powder, just because it smells so good. While cooking just be sure not to use a liquid that contains a lot of sugar as it may burn if boiled down.

As for can selection: There’s no need to make sure that it’s a tight fit if using a stand. Try to avoid cans with a lot of paint on the outside the paint may chip away when hot. Also, recently some beer manufacturers have started lining their cans, this means there’s a plastic lining inside, and you don’t want to place that over high heat. If plastic burns, the fumes are toxic.