Divine Swine Bacon Jerky - Bangin' BBQ

This Bangin' BBQ is one of three new bacon jerky varieties now offered by Divine Bovine under their new "Divine Swine" brand.

The Divine Bovine brand has been around since 2001, but company founder Anthony Longo's passion for beef jerky goes back into the 1980s when he would travel back home from Mammoth Mountain in the California Sierras, and stop for some fresh made jerky at a local shop. Since then, he's mastered a unique recipe and built a popular brand that continues to sell in retail outlets across the country. This new bacon jerky line is now among the company's best sellers.

This "Bangin’ BBQ Flavored" is the best selling of Divine Bovine's bacon flavors. They describe it as a, "mild blend of savory spices and Pops’ unique recipe, slightly sweet with natural mesquite and hickory flavors, and a little kick from ginger and cayenne." They go on to say that their bacon jerky is "NON-GMO" and claim it's gluten-free and paleo-friendly.

Ingredients

Uncured bacon, brown sugar, tomato sauce, apple cider vinegar, water, mesquite smoke, sea salt, lemon juice, beef stock, granulated garlic, granulated onion, ground pepper, ginger, cayenne, hickory smoke, cumin, white pepper, paprika.

Review

The first flavors to arrive on the scene is a well-defined BBQ sauce, very sweet and lightly tangy. The bacon flavor comes on right away and mixes into the BBQ. There's a light smokiness. The chewing brings on more classic bacon flavor. The BBQ sauce slowly fades away as the chewing goes on, eventually bringing out more and more bacony goodness.

For being marketed as a BBQ flavored bacon jerky, this definitely has an easily recognizable BBQ sauce flavor up front, tasting more smoky, tomatoey and sweet with only light levels of spices and seasonings. Think of it more as a Kansas City style BBQ sauce, more heavily sweet, with a tangy, smoky character.

Otherwise, the primary taste profile is largely the classic flavor of bacon, but with a well-sweetened, noticeably smokey, BBQ sauce flavor, and light touches of seasonings.

The meat consistency for a bacon jerky is excellent. This is the standard thickness you'd find in a package of bacon at a grocery store, and not the extra-thin kind you'd find at breakfast buffets. It has that nice balance of being cooked enough to where the fat has a light crisp, but the meat is still chewy. These strips appear to have a slightly better ratio of meat-to-fat, where you seem to get a bit more meat than what you'd get in typical grocery store bacon.

Verdict

This Bangin' BBQ Bacon Jerky from Divine Swine delivers a lot of great BBQ sauce flavor for those who love that extra sweet Kansas City style with a noticeably smokey, yet lightly seasoned profile. But it's the bacon flavor and meat consistency that's the real winner in this. You get the full, classic American flavor of bacon in slightly more meaty strips than normal at just the right level of cooking, not too rare, not too well-done. The high level of sweet in this can definitely be overwhelming if favor less of the sugary stuff, but in this case the bacon richness still remains the dominant character and only gets better and better as the chewing goes on.

Rating: Good (4/5)