Improvement in Fredericksburg at BBQ Jamboree
We’ll, I’m finally getting around to recapping our second event of the year. A week after our debacle down in Edenton, NC at Hogfest, Brown Liquor BBQ headed south again, but this time only a short 45 minutes from our world headquarters in Springfield, VA (ok, I as the captain live there, so that’s why we call that our home). We decided to leave all of our supplies in the trailer and live without our cookers for a week so we could easily get our stuff down there without the logistics of coordinating four guys and their stuff to meet up, etc…(one of the draw backs of being an equal team of four when we’re a bit scattered in traffic laden northern VA). This comp was already presenting some challenges:
- I (Nancy) was going to have to bail Friday night after I put my brisket on to return home to attend my daughter’s First Holy Communion, leaving three inexperienced brisket cookers to finish it up and turn it in on Saturday (I did leave detailed notes, ;-)).
- Jingles couldn’t show up until around midnight on Friday (I guess technically that’s Saturday) due to softball coaching commitments
- The People’s Choice (frozen) pork butts and health department fiasco…I’m not going to even go on beyond this bullet point, but will simply say (type) one word, COMPLETE CLUSTERFUCK…ok, two words!
- Cook’s meeting time confusion (11:00, 1:00, 4:15, 5:00) yes, all were mentioned or listed on the event web site at one time or another (see sentiment at end of bullet point #3 above).
I decided Thurday night it would be advantageous to drive down after work and drop the trailer onsite so that was one less thing we had to worry about. Mr. Bean was kind enough to take the reigns and be official pitmaster for this comp since he was able to be onsite Friday morning and throughout. He stepped up big and procured all of the necessary health department required items so that we could cook the mandatory People’s Choice (again, see bullet point #3 above…biting tongue!). He got us mostly all set up, inspections completed (KCBS meat and health dept) and was able to meet our neighbors and get us the lay of the land.
Peanut and I showed up in the early afternoon and we got rolling with trimming, injecting, cook’s meeting, dinner, and of course brown liquor…all the normal Friday night stuffs! It was cool to meet Tuffy Stone from Cool Smoke just down the road in Richmond. What a down-to-earth fellow. We also made some new friends including Damage BBQ, Bucky’s BBQ and Blazing Saddles BBQ. We caught back up with Gooney Creek who won grand champion in our first ever comp…so they were glad their good luck charms were back!
Our Fredericksburg set up.
Again, I missed Saturday and turn ins, so this entry will be shortened, but the short of is we had better results this week. Still not what we’re looking for, but back to respectibility after a poor showing in Edenton. Mr. Bean’s pork butt finally came through as the team’s best entry of the week. His 10th place call kept our perfect streak of hearing our name at every awards ceremony in comps we’ve competed in. Jingles and Peanut were disappointed with their results, although they were just a few spots back of Bean. The brisket brought up the rear again, but the boys did ok by me with finishing not too awfully low for their first time fooling with that big hunk of chesty beef!
Peanut’s rib box
I was able to drive back down for the awards ceremony and to help clean up. All in all, I left Fredericksburg feeling much better about things. We’re back to where we were after the end of our brief first season and improving. We’re looking forward to some good finishes ahead. We’re getting our turn ins down, our flavor profiles down and our processes and consistencies improved. We’re off for a bit until mid June for back to back weekend cooks again in Frederick, MD at Swinetastic and Palmyra, VA at BBQ, Bands & Brews.
BBQ Jamboree, Fredericksburg, VA (out of 27 teams):
Overall – 601.7138 (18th)
Chicken – 153.1428 (14th)
Ribs – 155.9998 (13th)
Pork – 155.4284 (10th)
Brisket – 137.1428 (21st)
Brown Liquor BBQ Starts Off 2012 in Edenton
After debuting last year and having a little bit of early success, the long offseason ended and Brown Liquor BBQ headed south with our new trailer and without Jingles for our first comp of the season at Hogfest in Edenton, NC. Mr. Bean’s parents have a nice house about 10 miles away in Albemarle Plantation on the first fairway of the Sound golf course, so the boys went down early for some pre-comp fun. After arriving late on Wednesday, we got settled in and poured a few cocktails before turning in early…in the morning. Peanut and I (Nancy) were up at the crack of 9:30 and we all soon got on the road to hit Central Meats in Cheseapeake, VA, about an hour away. We had commited to picking up another team’s meat and we wanted to check it out too and pick up a few things. Wow, this place definitely has the bbq competitor in mind: great selections of meats, all the top selling rubs and sauces, smoke wood, and you can even rent a smoker big enough to cook a whole hog if you need one! Peanut picked up some ribs and I got a prime brisket. We grabed everything and headed back to NC, just about an hour away. But first we had to stop to try the new dorito taco at Taco Bell. Yeah, it’s pretty money!
We arrived back at base camp and decided to forego a round of golf and instead started preparing our meat. I trimmed the two briskets and made the injection for the next day. The boys started trimming chicken.
After chicken prep we headed over the comp site to drop the trailer in our spot and eat the provided dinner. The seafood dinner was really good, fried shrimp, oysters, catfish, rice, cole slaw and hush puppies…yum!
We headed back, finished up a few things and sat outside by the first fairway with some cocktails and chicken wings.
Friday morning we got up and headed over to the comp and started getting set up. Things went relatively smoothly and besides forgetting a few minor things (like our second pop up tent), we were good to go. We had sausage and peppers for lunch and just hung out until the cook’s meeting. Here’s a snapshot of our site with the new (to us) trailer on the right.
After the cooks meeting, Pat put on a pizza with fig jelly, prosciutto and garganzola for Anything Butt non dessert. Little did he figure, he’d end up finishing fourth!
After ABND turn ins we got down to business, doing final trimming, injecting, wrapping chicken, etc…oh and of course saucing…no, not the bbq.
Yes, this was quite an event to be seen. You bet on a number and if the chicken pooped on your number, you won a bunch of cash…no, we did not win!
We met some great neighbors on both sides and were invited to a card game next door at Armed and Hammered BBQ. I’m guessing we were strategically put next to each other just based on our team names. A long night ensued, but everything got put on the smokers as scheduled. Here’s our other neighbor Jim of J&M BBQ, we had to get a picture of that shirt!
The next morning everything got off to a good, but slow start. Turns ins went relatively smoothly and after the boys got booted from the cornhole tournament, we cleaned up and headed for awards. Like I mentioned above, we got a call for fourth place Anything Butt non dessert. Our KCBS meat finishes were poor. We finished quite a bit lower than our previous two competitions and it left us scratching our collective heads. We know we made minor mistakes here and there, but we really thought we had a couple of really good turn ins, especially in chicken and pork. The results are below, but this really left us hanging our heads. After a lot of rehashing the weekend and remembering the really awesome time we had, we were in better spirits and headed back to the house before heading home the next morning. We’re really glad that we get to go right back at it next weekend at the BBQ Jamboree in Fredericksburg, VA to get this taste out of our mouth! We’re also glad that we go from the furthest trip on our schedule to the closest!
Turn ins:
Hogfest I, Edenton, NC (out of 33 teams):
Overall – 603.9992(29th)
Chicken – 158.2856(20th)
Ribs – 149.1426(28th)
Pork – 154.2854(25th)
Brisket – 142.2856 (30th)
Anything Butt Non Dessert – Pizza- 4th Place
2011 Year in Review- Brown Liquor BBQ Competes for the First Time
Well, Brown Liquor BBQ is preparing for our second year cooking and competing as a team, it’s time to finally reflect on our inaugural year cooking and competing as an official team on the KCBS circuit.
After all of the preparation, debate, planning, scheduling obstacles in Spring and early Summer of 2011, Team Brown Liquor BBQ finally took the plunge, head first and entered a bbq competition. Sure, we had done some practice and had several discussions, but not only did we go against conventional wisdom by not starting off doing some backyard bbq competitions to get our feet wet, we didn’t even have a full mock KCBS-style competition run through. One thing we have on our side is that we are made up of four team members, sharing responsiblity (workload and financial) equally. This makes a lot of the timing issues rather simple to orchestrate. We each have our own cookers too, so pretty much it’s up to each guy to do his one meat and simply assist where needed otherwise. I think this gave us the confidence to go ahead and enter and cook in our first official KCBS competition, Mountain Maryland BBQ Bash!
Located in the mountains of Maryland, between Virginia and Pennslvania on Route 68 is Cumberland, MD. Our crew got on the road about 9:00am and after a stop for breakfast, got, as my father-in-law would say, DDR (down da road!). The drive through the mountains of Maryland was beautiful, although Jingles and his phobia of driving over bridges and in mountains might disagree. After turning white and yelling at me to drive slower, he finally regained the color in his face as we pulled up, got our site and started set up.
Here’s our set up in Cumberland, not too bad for a bunch of rookies!
Set up went like clockwork…it was like we’d done it before (Special thanks to Mooks BBQ who came over and said hi and offered us some begginers tips and a “y” splitter for the hose!). After a stroll to get our bearings, meet some folks and take in the scenery, it was time to get business. We got our meat inspected, hit the cooks meeting, met some fellow competitors, trimmed our meats and made some grub for dinner.
Nancy tends to dinner for the team…brats with peppers and onions, mmm.
After wrapping up dinner, we had some time to kick back, have a few cocktails and just hang out. Casey from Coon Daddy’s Grillin’ Company wandered over to our set up and struck up a conversation. With drink in hand and looking to have some fun hanging out, invited us over to their team area for some more drinks and fun. We met the whole crew and hit it off well and drank and BS’d deep into the night…including some hooch that we knew was going to fight back the next day!
A snapshot of Coon Daddy’s smoker…and smoke!
Mr. Bean and I got the briskets and butts on late and headed back over to Coon Daddy’s for the famous “one more drink”. We stumbled back to camp in the wee hours for some shut eye knowing the next day would be hectic and unfamiliar as it would be our first KCBS turn ins!
Mr. Bean on his way to the river as he forges through the turn in box preparation!
Of course morning came at the speed of light and after a trip to the breakfast room for some grub and coffee, we were in full competition mode. Peanut and Jingles were already lighting fires and cooking ribs and the butts and briskets were getting pulled and wrapped to rest in coolers. Like set up, everything went like clockwork. We really came together and clicked as a team. We all put our best product in the box and turned in everything on time. We were proud of our efforts and happy with our first experience. Now it was time to clean up and wait for the awards ceremony.
Here I am giving an assist to Peanut as we put the rib box together.
Our team goal was simply to finish in the top 2/3…meaning of the 25 teams, we were hoping to finish around 15. The first announcements for chicken were being called and it was cool to see so many teams right around our area being called. “Brown Liquor BBQ”…WHAT…did he just say, holy shit, he did! We got a 2nd place call in chicken! We rushed to the stage to collect our big ass trophy and $200 check! We were on cloud nine. Jingles of course gets most of the credit, but we have a total team philosophy and we all took pride in our accomplishment and Jingles was first to share this great feat! Peanut’s ribs also finished tied for 10th place! The icing on the cake was a 10th place overall finish. Congrats to Gooney Creek who won their first grand champion. Maybe the best part is that we had so much fun and learned so much. We already knew what mistakes we made and were excited to fix them and do another comp ASAP.
Jingles and his 2nd place chicken trophy and call home to share the good news! See all our pics from our first competition, including turn in box shots on our team Facebook page here and here.
Our second competition was Smoketoberfest in Chambersburg, PA. This was a much bigger competition with 47 teams competing with many top notch teams included. We had a great site for our team area with a fire pit that came in handy with the temps dropping after the sun went down. They did chef’s choice type competition with apples that were supplied. I decided to do fried apple fritters with bacon crumbs spread on top. I finished 15th which I deemed a success since I had just found the recipe online that week and only practiced it once.
Nancy’s bacon sprinkles apple fritter. Why yes, that is an apple carved swan swimming in a pool of blue dyed shredded coconut!
High winds threatened to reek havoc with Mr. Bean’s overnight cooking of pork butts on his WSMs, but we found that on the upper area of the cooking sites and under some big willow trees, wind was not much of a factor at all. We heard the next morning that that was not the case in the lower team site area as they fought the wind all night and the next morning. We sat by the fire pit and enjoyed a few cocktails as is typical for us…hell it’s in our name!
Our neighbors Fax Maxines and their kick ass train smoker!
I awoke the next morning as was freezing, so I stoked the fire back up and warmed up while Jingles and Peanut began their process for cooking ribs and chicken. I wandered down the breakfast area for some needed eggs and coffee, made a stop to pick up some free provided fire wood for the pit and were back to our area and starting to focus on the turn ins that would be there before we knew it!
“Brown Liquor BBQ”! Damn if we didn’t hear our name again. Peanut’s ribs got a 9th place call! Needless to say he was pumped and we all felt very good. Again, icing on the cake was a very solid 20th place finish out of 47 teams. Again, we were well in the top half of competitors and felt like our first competition wasn’t a fluke and that we belonged (perhaps most importantly, we’re not embarrasing ourselves!).
Here are our turn ins for everything except pork…getting better.
All in all, we feel as a team that our first year, though only two competitions was a huge success. First and foremost we accomplished the two goals we set out to do. 1. Have fun and 2. Finish in the to 2/3 of the field. We learned so much about competition bbq and know that we can improve. We are chomping on the bit to get back out there in 2012 and see how good we can be. Our goals this year are similar, 1. Have fun and 2. Be consistently in the top half of the field. We’re hoping that by the end of the 2012 season, we may even pull off a high team finish somewhere along the way. Mr. Bean and I haven’t had the results we feel like we’re capable of in pork and brisket and know when we do, our team numbers will only go up! We’re planning on doing a lot more events in 2012, hopefully at least one per month. I’ll try to keep the blog updated as we go.
Maryland Mountain Results (out of 25 teams):
Overall – 634.8572 (10th)
Chicken – 168.0004 (2nd)
Ribs – 158.8570 (tied 10th)
Pork – 150.8570 (21st)
Brisket – 157.1428 (15th)
Smoketoberfest (out of 47 teams):
Overall – 621.1430 (20th)
Chicken – 157.7144 (24th)
Ribs – 160.5714 (9th)
Pork – 153.7142 (27th)
Brisket – 149.1430 (27th)
Apple – 158.286 (15th out of 35)
All for now,
Nancy
Brown Liquor BBQ
And since we’re all web 2.0, high tech social media wannanbes, follow or fan us at the following:
Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/215371785182262/
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Email, brownliquorbarbeque@gmail.com
Turkey Cookin’ for Charity with Coon Daddy’s
A few weeks ago, Casey Coon from Coon Daddy’s Grilling Co. contacted various members of Brown Liquor BBQ to see if we’d help cook some bacon wrapped turkey breasts with them up in Frederick, MD. We met Coon Daddy’s at our first competition in Cumberland, MD and we hit it off with them, plus, the proceeds were going to charity, so we said sure! BLBBQ met up at my house in the morning and we got on the road (Yes, I, Nancy was actually well prepared and ready to go when the boys got to the house!). We were asked to be there around 2:00, but we were excited to cook again, so we hit the road early and pulled up to Corey’s house around 11:00. As well laid plans seldom go off without a hitch, so too did this one. To make a long story short, we arrived to find 40 frozen whole turkeys.
The only thing to do was to spring into action and start thawing out birds as fast as we could. We found everything we could that would hold water and started filling up coolers, totes, you name it, we filled it. We changed the water frequently and the birds started thawing pretty quickly.
Jingles goes into action in full-on turkey thaw mode!
After just a couple of hours, we had about half of the turkeys thawed enough to start stuffing and wrapping in bacon.
Casey Coon stuffing birds
Peanut supervising as the stuffed birds get bacon wrapped!
Finally time to put some birds on the cookers!
All in all we were able to help out with nearly all the turkeys before we had to pack up and go home. We had a good time and made some money for charity…a good day! Let’s go it again next year…in Northern VA!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone. My turkey is going in the brine tonight for an overnight swim and then onto my Big Green Egg for a long tanning session tomorrow.
Gobble goggle,
Nancy
Brown Liquor BBQ
See all the pictures from this weekend’s cook on our Facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/?ref=tn_tnmn#!/media/set/?set=oa.266732323379541&type=1.
Thanks for reading, find BLBBQ here also:
Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/215371785182262/
Twitter, http://twitter.com/#!/BrownLiquorBBQ
Email, brownliquorbarbeque@gmail.com
The Evolution of Brown Liquor BBQ and Becoming a KCBS Judge
In this blog entry, I try to give a recap summary of how our competition bbq team was formed as well as my experience with becoming a KCBS certified judge.
In the Spring of 2010, I got a Big Green EGG. Well, actually it was a gift from my very generous inlaws. My father-in-law-had an egg and showed me all about it one day and the food was so good and the cooker was so cool, I just had to have one. To this day, I say jokingly, but it’s true, “my egg has been life changing”. Big Green Egg has a users forum and so I spent nearly every waking hour that wasn’t occupied with work, kids or house duties reading up on anything and everything barbeque.
Here’s my baby the day I received her:
In researching bbq and watching a lot of YouTube clips on bbq competitions, I thought…why not start a bbq competition team? I learned a couple of things really quick in my research about competition bbq: 1. It’s a lot of work 2. It’s a lot of $ 3. It’s not easy and requires a lot of organization 4. It looks like shitload of fun! My reaction? I’m going to need some teammates!
Well, I like to play golf. And I have a great network of friends that like to play golf. I go to at least two big golf trips a year (I’m sure there’ll be a future post about golf trips!). During these trips there are three things that happen…and happen a lot. 1. Lot’s of golf is played 2. Lots of brown liquor is consumed and 3. We love to come together around a fire and cook…steaks, ribs, chicken…you name it, we cook it. And often, a couple of us would pre-cook pork butt or brisket and bring it down for the guys to snack on between our community meals. (In fact, just as a cool side note, one of the best cooks of the group who isn’t on our team, but has competed in the past and cooks some killer pork butt for us THE Maytag Man. Yep, that guy.) So, after years of sharing cooking tips, recipes, secrets and the usual BS that goes with q’ing, I send an email out to three of the guys that lived near me on the trip and inquired about starting a team. I was clear that “no” was a perfectly acceptable answer and that it’d be a commitment in time and money. All three guys were IN without hesitation and Brown Liquor BBQ was born! We have an unofficial nickname on our golf trip and call it the Brown Liquor Invitational, so we made a minor modification and the name just stuck!
Special thanks to Mr. Bean for getting our logo created and the banner, aprons and shirts printed.
Since this was my idea and I didn’t want to show up to our first comp and embarrass ourselves, I decided to become a KCBS judge. What is KCBS? Well basically it’s the gold standard for sanctioning bbq contests nationwide. You cook four meats, pork shoulder or butt, beef brisket, baby back or spare ribs and chicken. So, I took the necessary requirements to become a certified judge…which is basically a four hour class. Here I am after completing the class posing with instructor and KCBS co-founder Carolyn Wells.
With my shiny new KCBS nametag complete with certified number and my enthusiasm for bbq, I sought out a couple of competitions to judge. Wow, what a fun and tremendous learning experience when it comes to the world of bbq. The folks around the judging table were super friendly and a wealth of knowledge…mostly good! I judged Que and Cruz in Louisa, VA and the Bluemont BBQ Bash (I was able to take Jingles to the Bluemonth BBQ Bash which was an invaluable experience for him to see a comp firsthand).
My first impression of what I was tasting at the judges table, was, “Man, this is good, but I know me and my boys can cook as good or better than a lot of this stuff”. I also learned a lot about what the judges liked and didn’t like. What they like to see regarding appearance and little tips about tell tale signs when a cook is trying to hide a less-than-perfect cook (cutting an undercooked brisket extra thin or an overcooked crumbly brisket too thick). I also sought out and bent the ear of a lot of judges that had been or were current competition cooks. These were the folks with the best advice. The theme I kept hearing was, GET ORGANIZED! Have a plan and stick to it.
I took that information back to the team. We organized some practice cooks and Mr. Bean centralized a check list for all of our supplies. We spread the financial responsibility out evenly. Because of this it was important to me as the captain of the team that each team member have equal responsibility and have ownership of one of the competition meats. We all help each other out a great deal, but we all have final say on our one competition meat. See the About page for how we break the meat cook owners down. This has worked out very well for us in our only two competitions to date. I’ll post recaps of those two events in the very near future. How we did, what we learned and the shenanigans that were had!
All for now…
Nancy
Brown Liquor BBQ
Brown Liquor BBQ, the blog!
What is Brown Liquor BBQ? It’s a competition BBQ team made up of four good golf buddies who can barbeque pretty well. We share a common love for golf, bbq and do so always while enjoying inappropriate quantities of brown liquor…typically bourbon…and typically either Maker’s Mark or George Dickel. Our team is made up of four guys, and each owns one of the KCBS competition meats, although we all help each other a great deal when it’s crunch time. This year we decided to take the plunge and enter two contests and had some very good results for a new team (more on that another day). We had a blast and now we’re hooked. Here’s who we are:
Brian “Nancy” Walrath is the brisket cook
Patrick “Mr. Bean” Kelly is our pork butt cook
Justin “Peanut” Raynor is our rib cook
And Dean “Jingles” Ferington our chicken cook
So,
That’s who we are. I’m (Nancy) just starting this blog and it’s a new world for me trying to figure out how it’s done, so be patient. We’ll probably be posting updates on cooks, team event pictures and highlights, bbq related stuff, stuff that we just feel like posting…whatever tickles our fancy.
We’re not a typical bbq team. We refuse to take ourselves that seriously. This doesn’t mean we don’t want to dominate the bbq circuit, but we’re realists and believe first and foremost in having a great time, seeing what we’ve got against other teams (especially the ones that do take themselves too seriously ;-)), and building our friendship…although if you’ve ever been around the four of us, you’d probably think we hated each other. Like we often say about ourselves, “if you have low self esteem…this is the not the team for you”!
More on the following topics to come, for now, just getting this thing off the ground. Let us know if you have anything you’d like us to write about, questions or just send us a line about anything. I’ll write (and try to get the other guys to contribute too) soon about topics such as:
– More about our team, how we were formed, golf handicaps, stories behind our nicknames
– Becoming a KCBS judge and tales from the judging table
– Our cookers and favorite gadgets/rigs, favorite rubs/sauces, BBQ techniques
– Favorite recipes…likely unique things you don’t see on every other bbq blog or site
– Our favorite watering holes/restaurants/dives in our travels
– Trash talking regarding our vast variety of favorite sports teams
– Stories about our first year competing (2011, only 2 events, but definitely enough to fill a couple posts!)
– Upcoming schedule as soon as we iron out details and personal commitments
– Other bbq related shenanigans from BLBBQ…like our new theme song…stay tuned.
And since we’re all web 2.0, high tech social media wannanbes, follow or fan us at the following:
Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/215371785182262/
Twitter, http://twitter.com/#!/BrownLiquorBBQ
Email, brownliquorbarbeque@gmail.com
All for now, peace and chicken grease!
Nancy,
Brown Liquor BBQ
Brown Liquor BBQ 