The Jack Daniels World Championship BBQ Competition

Lynchburg, Tn

Oct 27th, 2012

A national KCBS sanctioned event

What an absolute amazing experience it is to represent California competition BBQ at the Jack Daniels World Championships! This is the competition that every team wants to get to some day. In fact only a year ago, it wasn't even something we dreamed about being so far off the scale for us.

Well we won the draw for California 2012. And when The Jack draws your name, you don't say no.

What an amazing experience it is to roll into Lynchburg as a Jack team and load into your spot amongst many of the biggest names of the professional competition BBQ circuit, and know that you have a chance - maybe not much, but a chance.

Thursday is load-in day and we arrived with plenty of daylight left to start our setup - something that's normally done entirely on Friday. With most of our site setup done by Thursday evening it was time to venture beyond our immediate surroundings and make the rounds.

We had a great time meeting teams like 3Eyz, Tarheels BBQ, Chris Heart of IQue and many more. We had familiar faces too - I.A.B 30, Rhythm & Que, Slap Yo Daddy, Pelletheads.com, and other teems we'd met only a few weeks prior at the Royal like Flynns Finest, Killer Hogs, Guru and others.

We met living legends like Mike Mills, Paul Kirk, John Willingham and more. Now I can be quite the name dropper now at next years season.

Come Friday morning we took the distillery tour once our meats were inspected. The tour is worth a lot more than the price of admit ion - it's very good, and it's free.

Later in the day Friday, the Parade of Teams, followed by a bus ride up the hill for dinner and entertainment. I'm not much of a parade guy, but it was awesome. We had our California flag, our small banner, and everyone cheered like we weren't crazy Californians at all.

With Friday getting on, it's time to start prepping meats and focus on our cook. Everything to the plan, and in bed for plenty of rest.

Come Saturday morning, some things didn't turn out so well, our chicken was terrible, but our ribs were quite good. Neither would earn us a walk during awards.

Our pork butts refused to cook, and I did something I have never ever done before - I foiled the pork - it had to be done. Unfortunately, the pork came out dry, I'm not sure that's because it was over cooked or under cooked - it pulled like it was a little under cooked.

But the brisket came out awesome - easy top 5 at home. Other than the ribs, the brisket was next best chance at a call.

Unfortunately, the brisket came in 51st out of 87 - what the heck were the other guys turning in?

Here's the breakdown of 87 teams.

Overall: 59th

Chicken: 79th (well deserved)

Ribs: 38th

Pork: 32nd

Brisket: 51st