Plan Farm Smokehouse

The Plan Farm Smokehouse has become the cornerstone of Brian and Janet’s desire to create distinctive food supplied directly from their farm to their customers. Whilst Scotland has a wonderful reputation for its smoked fish, very few smokehouses can smoke beef and lamb and, as with all fine food, it is with the best quality ingredients that a true chef begins. Isle of Bute grass-fed beef and lamb has its own succulence and flavour upon which a reputation for truly outstanding smoked meats has been created by Brian and Janet.
From the finely hand-sliced portions of roast smoked beef and lamb which form the signature dishes of the Plan Farm Smokehouse, new foods are constantly being developed such as the range of hot smoked slicing sausages – all incorporating delicate mixtures of fresh and smoked meats.
To make the Smokehouse range all embracing, pork, cheese and trout are also smoked.
All foods are smoked in the on-farm kilns which burn sawdust from re-cycled oak whisky casks giving an added and delicate flavour to the meats, fish and cheese. Prior to smoking, the meats and fish are marinated in cures comprising recipes which have been developed in-house over a number of years.

The Kilns
The two kilns were hand-built by Brian using steel sourced from the island’s boatyard. Each can hold around 200kg of meat to be smoked, and the doors alone take two men to lift on and off their hinges. They were built over six weeks, and form the heart of the smokery operation.

The Curing
The beef and lamb is cured and marinated in brine containing herbs, spices, sugar and wine. The brines and marinades that we use are unique to each product. After curing, the cuts are allowed to rest for the marinade to totally infuse the meat. The smoking process then begins.

The Smoking
This may take anything from just a few hours to more than a day depending upon the meat being smoked, and the strength of flavour required. Smoking takes place over oak shavings from Scotch Whisky barrels, which are sourced from various Highland distilleries. The early part of the process is a cold smoke, which gives a delicate smokey flavour to the meat, after which the kiln fireboxes are changed from smoulder to a more lively burn in order to roast smoke the meat to succulent perfection. This is a tricky process taking several hours, and can be affected by wind speed, humidity and ambient temperature. Hence each batch being smoked may vary slightly, lending a distinctive touch to a truly artisan process. During the later stages of smoking the meats are coated with a glaze comprising oils, herbs, spices, and fruits to perfect the final flavour. After chilling and a further resting period the meats are sliced by hand and vacuum packed, before being delivered to our customers all over Scotland.

NEWS

Smoke House Closure

Taste of Bute Ltd was first registered back in 1999 by Brian and Janet with a view to marketing premium beef and lamb from The Plan Farm and to encourage other island producers to participate in a joint marketing venture. The primary motivation behind the island-based project was to encourage all of the island's farmers to produce high health status livestock that could be marketed with a unique brand following the industry's crisis of the UK-wide BSE outbreak in 1996.

In the early year's Taste of Bute marketed small volumes of fresh beef and lamb to the UK mainland but the logistics of distributing a
fresh highly perishable product from a remote island base were challenging. Longer shelf-life added value products were seen as the way forward and in 2008/9 the opportunities to produced cured smoked meats were researched resulting in converting some of the redundant vernacular buildings at The Plan Farm into a smokery.

The first products produced were Roast smoked beef andlamb, soon to be joined by smoked trout and cheese which were also produced on
the island at that time. In order to utilise remaining parts of the lamb and beef carcase, not suitable for smoking, the now highly acclaimed Sleeping Warrior and Drover's Dilemma hot roast sausages were created and added to the range. In 2011 two more sausages, Highland Flinger and Red Sky at Night were introduced along with beef pastrami. A number of products were awarded star ratings in the industry's Great Taste Awards in 2010 and 2011 but the outstanding success was the recognition by Scotland of Food and Drink of the Sleeping Warrior as Scotland's best Red Meat/Game product in 2011.

Throughout the years of developing Taste of Bute there was always the pressure of running the home farming enterprise comprising a
100-head herd of suckler cows and the 750 ewe flock. Brian manages the cows and grassland whilst Janet is the single-handed shepherd. In 2010 Lauren joined us to help with the smokehouse operation, assisted for a short while by her partner, Jonathan. In 2011 Tara was
recruited as smokehouse manager, and was then further assisted by Fiona. They proved to be a fantastic team – Lauren the champion slicer, Tara the real organisational cool-headed brain, and Fiona who we could never properly see because she was constantly lost in the smoke of the kiln-room. However even with this magnificent trio, the executive pressures felt by Brian and Janet were considerable with the potential to impact upon the well-running of the farming enterprise.

Sadly, despite all our successes and tremendous rapport with our customers, at the end of 2011 the decision has been taken to cease the
smokehouse production. The recipes and the well-guarded secrets of production have all been archived and who knows, maybe the next generation at The Plan will consider a re-launch one day. But for the time being Brian, now approaching 65 and Janet ably assisted by Fly and Molly will get back to farming their cows and sheep without the the pressures of flow charts, food hygiene manuals and the
need to constantly meet the plethora of regulatory requirements that come with running a food production business.

We thank all our customers both small and large who have given us so much encouragement throughout the short life of the Plan Farm
Smokehouse.