KC's Old Style Beef Jerky - Peach BBQ

KC's Old Style Beef Jerky is produced by KC's Old Style, Inc., out of Vancouver, WA. The brand's website claims it's a small four-person business headed by a guy named KC Mittleider.

As I explained in my previous review of their teriyaki variety, the package doesn't come with an inspection mark, something I thought was a requirement on all meat products. It only says that it was packaged in Orchards, WA, and the ingredients list says it's made with USDA beef. I had called the phone number on the package, left a message, but never got an answer.

As I returned to their website today, I see it has been taken offline with just a message that they are moving to another location and will be back soon.

According to the company literature, they smoke their jerky with a blend of Hickory and Northwest Alder, and then run it through a flavor tumbler.

Ingredients

100% USDA beef, brown sugar, salt, worcestershire, soy sauce, onion & garlic powders, bourbon whiskey peach glaze.

Taste

What I taste on the surface of these pieces is a strong smoky flavor, a strong sweetness, a meaty aroma, and a slight bit of salty. In the chewing, I get a good deal of natural meat flavors, more sweetness, a bit more saltiness, and the same amount of smokiness.

The level of smokiness is quite strong particularly on the surface. It's a jerky you want to suck on first just to enjoy that flavor, mixed into the sweet glaze.

As for the Peach BBQ flavor advertisement, I don't really identify anything peachy, with the exception of a heavy sweetness. The BBQ claim is more plausible with the heavy smoky flavor and sticky sweet glaze. I don't necessarily taste any kind of tangy or spicy flavor that normally accompanies a BBQ flavor, but then again BBQ sauces can vary greatly in taste. It's hard to nail it down specifically.

Mostly what I taste in this jerky is this heavily smoky natural meat flavor. The smokiness is noticed first as I put a piece into my mouth, and then it develops into the natural meat flavors as I start chewing, and stays there all the way to the swallow.

That natural meat flavor has quite a bit of sweetness in it, perhaps resulting from the tumbling process. I'd consider that sweetness the second-most dominant flavor in this jerky.

The level of saltiness is light. It's noticeable, but it really doesn't dominate this jerky at all.

The garlic & onion powders are hardly noticeable; I think I can detect faint traces of garlic. If anything these ingredients mostly color the dominant flavors. The same with the soy sauce and worcestershire.

Meat Consistency

These appear to be chunks of whole meat, sliced thick, in mostly bite-sized pieces, but some may require biting off into two.

It's a moist jerky, but not as moist as the photos below might suggest. Each piece is heavily glazed. It's still a soft and easy chew, there's perhaps a little bit of chewiness to it, but overall quite easy to eat.

The chewing texture is very meat-like, it feels like eating a real steak. It has a fibrous, meaty quality to it. The dehydration process perhaps leaves this a tad chewy in the first few chews, but after that it breaks down quite nicely and chews like a medium-cooked steak.

The thick glaze on these pieces requires one to lick their fingers before touching anything.

I see only small bits of fat on some of these pieces, otherwise it's seems pretty lean. I didn't find any chewy chunks of tendon or gristle.




Snack Value

I paid $6.00 for this 4 ounce package of peach BBQ from KC's website. That works out to a price of $1.50 per ounce, putting this into the average price range. But there was a shipping fee of $5.49, and I actually bought three different flavors in total (12 ounces). That all comes out to a price per ounce of $1.96, just on the border of average and expensive.

For general jerky snacking purposes, at the $1.96 price per ounce, I think it offers a good value. I get a great deal of snackability from this, primarily from its smoky meat flavor, thick sweet glaze, and its moist soft steak-like chewing texture.

As a peach BBQ variety, also at the $1.96 per ounce price, I think it's a weak value. I don't really find anything that resembles a peach flavor, and while it does have a smoky, sweet flavor, that's about all I find that associates with a BBQ variety.

Rating

I'm giving this a good rating.

This peach BBQ variety from KC's Old Style Beef Jerky is actually very enjoyable and very snackable, with its strong smoky and sweet glaze on the surface, and its smoky sweet natural meat flavors. It has a great chewing texture much like a medium-cooked steak, and provides a good deal of soft juicy jerky snacking.

I just didn't find it living up to its billing as "peach BBQ". Albeit, maybe I'm not all that familiar with peach BBQ as a type of BBQ sauce, but when I see something advertised with these words, I'm particularly drawn to the idea of combining a tangy spicy BBQ sauce with the sweet fruity flavor of peach. I don't really get any tangy and spicy, and I don't really get any fruity peach flavor.

But despite that, this is still a very good jerky, one that you'll find very snack worthy. It has a good deal of flavor intensity in each bite.

I think a good beer to pair up with is a light tasting cream ale or honey blonde ale, that won't compete against the strong smokiness.

Rating: Good

Buy this online:

• http://www.kcsjerky.com/