Ale-braised Slow Roast Pork

I love it when I inspire myself to cook a delicious German-inspired meal- it makes me finally feel as though I'm putting my extensive learning of German vocabulary for GCSE to good use. When I forage around the Internet for recipes, I find that German recipes are rarely ever concrete, so adapt how you please, just keep the savoury, brass and warming themes of German cuisine.
Do get a cheap, fattier cut of pork for this- the meat is so much more tender and the fat imparts so much flavour.
1)Prepare a rub for a pork shoulder (or another cheap, fatty cut) with its rind scored. Combine 4 crushed garlic cloves, and combine with it lots of European spirit- two crushed, dried bay leaves, a small teaspoon or so of juniper berries, ground, a teaspoon or so of salt, and two of caraway seeds and fennel seeds to bring out the porky flavour. Mix it all to a paste with a little oil and a few splashes of sherry vinegar and rub it all around the pork, including the meat beneath the rind. Place the meat on top of some chopped onions (no need to peel them), and roast at 200 for about 20 minutes.
2)Take the seared pork out, and add however many wedged potatoes you want. Obviously, they don't crisp as they braise in all the ale, but they do soak up an awful lot of flavour. Add one small bottle of beer, an amber ale would be best, and roast for about 2-3 hours at a much lower 150-170. In the last half an hour or so of cooking, add some big wedges of apple, big so they don't just disintegrate, and bake until they go soft too.
3)Lift the meat out and transfer to a chopping board, and encircle it with the apples and potatoes.
4)With the onions and reduced, now sweetened beer left in the tin, boil it down, add some vegetable stock, a bit of cornflour slaked in water until you're left with a thick gravy. Strain, then serve with your pork and a jar of sauerkraut and (if you're lucky unlike me) German mustard.