Page 117 - Barbecue Chicken Made Easy

of meat in the cavity above the can. Since the meat is relatively cool at first, much of the beer condenses and rolls back down into the can. But remember, chicken is muscle. That area is white meat, a solid mass of muscle which is saturated like a sponge with 75% water. There is no room for liquid to enter, and no mechanism, chemical or physical, to propel it inward. There are no superhighways for the beer to travel through.
Do this experiment. Get a mouthful of beer. Take a straw and place one end against a chicken breast and the other in your mouth. Now blow. Hard. No beer can enter the flesh. It is fully saturated. There is no place for it to go, even under pressure.
And anyone who says the beer crisps the skin, which is separated from the can by at least 1 inch of meat really has been smoking more than chicken. The skin is crisp because there is warm dry air all around it and because fat drips away in the vertical orientation.
In our tests we used 12 ounce cans. The AmazingRibs.com science advisor Professor Greg Blonder used 16 ounce cans. He also