Our fourth competition is now over!  It was the Taste of Grand Rapids, in Michigan, on July 14 and 15, 2006.  In this entry, I’m going to have lots of photos, and some deconstruction of my impressions of how we did and how the competition was run.

Let’s start with the competition organization.  This was in some ways a horrible competition.  Some proof of this is the reaction of other competitors on the BBQ Forum and the BBQ-Brethren Forum.  Basically, I felt that the organizers treated the cooks as an afterthought, without a lot of thought into what the teams needed.

For instance, there was electricity brought in for the vendors, but not the competitors.  There were only a very few facilities for the teams, yet plenty if you wanted to go find them a quarter mile away.  The ice was as far from the cooks as it could be, and the organizers didn’t deliver it to the cooks until well into the afternoon on Friday, though many teams were there by 9:00 am.  The reps didn’t walk around to introduce themselves, nor did they come by Saturday morning for time checks with the teams.

Ok, that’s the negative… Now the positive…

First, the site was very nice looking.  We got there early and got a great spot with some shade, in right field on a ball diamond, with fence behind us.  The shade lasted until about 4:00 pm, and then the sun went behind trees about 7:30 OR 8:00 pm.  We had canopies that helped, but it did get a bit warm Friday.  The weather stayed good, with only some very light sprinkles around lunchtime on Friday, though storms were a potential.

Though there were only a few teams I knew, there were other teams that I knew of, and I was looking forward to meeting.  Jeff of Big Creek BBQ had a killer Spicewine cooker, and he and his wife were really nice.  Mike from the BBQ Brethren was right next to us, and he spent a lot of Friday night/Saturday morning talking with us.  His team was a lot of fun, and they made some killer armadillo eggs!  And Brian and Linda Pearcy were there, from thebbqguy.com; Brian has a lot of good bbq know-how and a great blog, and they’re both warm, welcoming people.  And Neal and his wife from the BBQ Brethren came by, too!   I thoroughly enjoyed talking to everyone. 

We had a bunch of people by on Friday, and we fixed them chicken breast, cheddar metts, butter-boiled baked potatoes, tomato pie and bread pudding.  It was a lot of food!

The Smokehouse showed that we’re going the right direction; it needs some work here and there, but it did a great job, and held all the food we needed it to hold.  The biggest change it’s going to get is another chimney stack, and there’s thought into making it a reverse flow unit, which would take some work, but it’s doable.  We need to do a few things to the firebox to allow better airflow, and we’re going to get stops put on the racks so they’re stable when pulled out.  We also want to work on a way to keep the door open without having to hold it (it gets HOT!).  We may also look at a way to drain out the grease better.  All in all, it was SO much better than a gaggle of Chargrillers!

We made some big mistakes; we didn’t follow our method of checklisting, and we ended up forgetting some things, like our banner.  We learned, though, and we won’t do it again.  Ed Tobian joined us, and rightly made fun of that gaff.

Next entry will be about the entries and the results…

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