Now the real fun begins!
After we turned in our Anything Butt entry, we started to briefly
relax, then realized it was time to get moving. The way we
figured out when to do what was to backtrack from entry times and add a
little buffer.
Our equipment was 2 Chargrillers; we planned on doing butts and brisket
on one overnight (2 of each), and then ribs and chicken on the other in
the morning. We were also using Humphrey lump charcoal… good
stuff, but Wicked Good is better, I think. We also smoked with
pecan wood chunks.
So we fired up one of the Chargrillers, and once it got up to heat, we
put the butts on our top shelf and the brisket (flats) under
that. Everything went on just fine… Now we just had to
keep things moving.
Here’s where the next mistake came in… We’re there all night, but
where are we going to catch any sleep??? Mark thought somewhat
ahead; he had a thin pad an sleeping bag, and he slept right on the
trailer. I ended up sleeping in the passenger seat of his
van. The weather on Friday had been cloudy and cool, but it
cleared up at night, and got down to something like 40! Mark was
covered in dew and freezing, but I was ok in the van.
We had decided to take turns getting up to tend the fire, which we did
a bit. Cell phone alarms set, we tried to get some sleep. I
think we may have each gotten 3 hours total. The nice thing about
a lot of smokers going at night when the weather is cold is that you
can stand right next to your firebox and feel warm.
About 4:30, it’s time to get up. Chicken got trimmed (Mark does a
great job at this), and ribs were prepped. Old Dave spent about
30 minutes with us showing us how to pick out better ribs… GREAT
info. If you’re reading this and don’t know what a shiner is, ask
someone! While prep was going on, the other CG was warming up, so
it was ready for the ribs by 5:30 (we were doing babybacks). The
chicken went on about 8:30.
I really liked the ribs, by the way, but we have switched what we do
for them; I put a basic rub on them, but first applied a layer of my
wife’s apple butter. We ended up with really tasty ribs, but too
dark. We’ve simplified our approach somewhat since then.
Breakfast was served to us, and we were ready for it.
Unfortunately, it was biscuits and gravy, which I like, but the gravy
was cold, and the biscuits inedible. Fortunately, we had too much
food still. We learned to ensure we had our own breakfast from
then on.
After the ribs went on, and before the chicken did, the brisket and
butts reached temp. I was taking a leap of faith by foiling all
of it and putting in an empty cooler, filling it up with towels.
I was nervous that, when turn in time came, we’d have lost a lot of
temperature… But that’s for later. At one point, someone told
us that, at their first comp, they were frantic at 11:00, while we were
sitting down for a break. This is where I think good time
planning helped us; I had everything planned out fairly well, and we’d
stuck to schedule pretty well.
Turn ins are next time.
