A barbecue adventure, the saga unfolds.

[Matthew]

Pretty cool! That scoring system, however, is more complicated than a scoring system I'm aware of to hire people into 6 figure IT jobs. Although 6 figures isn't what it used to be, and that bbq looks pretty good.

It’s not as complicated as it sounds: score it on a classroom scale where a A is 9 points, B is 8, down to F is 5. When it’s entered in the spreadsheets the scores are calculated.

I don’t know why the weighting system goes out to so many digits other than it helps avoid ties unless multiple teams get identical score combinations. At some contests the difference between 1st and 10th could be less than a point.

All this talk of bbq is making me hungry. Next week I’m going to do a couple pork butts, a couple slabs of ribs, a pork loin, maybe a top round roast, some brats for lunch, and whatever else I can think of.

 

[Sac Arrow]

It's interesting that some of characteristics of prize winning BBQ is counter to my personal taste. I generally don't care for sauces on my bbq, especially sweet ones. It's not an absolute rule, but sweet glazes are out for me. A little sauce on a brisket sandwich would hit the spot of course. In my case lettuce wrap, but I suspect if I walked around the judgment grounds carrying a lettuce wrapped brisket sandwich, I'd be nailed to a cross.

 

[Matthew]

It's interesting that some of characteristics of prize winning BBQ is counter to my personal taste. I generally don't care for sauces on my bbq, especially sweet ones. It's not an absolute rule, but sweet glazes are out for me. A little sauce on a brisket sandwich would hit the spot of course. In my case lettuce wrap, but I suspect if I walked around the judgment grounds carrying a lettuce wrapped brisket sandwich, I'd be nailed to a cross.

Nope, a lettuce wrapped brisket sandwich is easier to handle than a brisket sandwich without a bun at all. You’ve never seen me destroy a brisket with my bare hands.

The sweet glaze is pretty standard for KC style ribs. The thing about KC bbq and ribs is it’s such a melting pot of other regional styles that you’ll be able to find some joint that does them differently.

For contests, though, it’s different. Teams have one chance, one bite, to make it pop for the judges. So it’s always over seasoned and over sweetened.

 

[Matthew]

Here are two more rib pix.

The first is from one of the Australian teams. I think I would mark this down on appearance because they don’t look as rich/dark as I would like. But I think I would ding them less than a full point and since we only deal in whole points and round up, my appearance score would probably be a 9.

The other pic is the team from Costa Rica. This is showing what the ribs look like right off the smoker, before the glaze/sauce is added. The Billy Bob teeth where the rib bones are sticking out is a good sign. This is a good example of a St. Louis cut slab of spare ribs that’s been trimmed down in length. (Edit: this is likely what you’d see in a restaurant, without the heavy glaze.)