Unpacked, cleaned, organized, re-packed, cooked chicken, cooked ribs.

Harvard MA

My team won the Mass State BBQ Championship this past weekend. The good news is our best categories were those we struggled with all season - Pork and Brisket. This win could have landed us an invite to the Jack Daniels Invitational for both 2010 and 2011. 2009 Mass State should be an automatic for 2010. 2010 would then be our 9th year competing at "The Jack". Jack Daniels has a rule that teams that have been invited to the Jack 9 times get an automatic invite for their 10th year.

Beautiful weather all weekend with the exception of the low 30's temp overnight.






Keg kicked


A hawk flew by our site

From Eat Local VT

John Delpha talks Porchetta

Jack Daniels Luck

Last year my team was lucky. We were drawn for the Jack Daniels contests, I think a 2/5 chance.

This year, somehow, we were even luckier. Like luckier than getting drawn for the Jack out of Missouri or TX.

After the Harpoon event we found ourselves with a great new cooker but not a Grand Championship in the 2009 season. We felt that we had been cooking pretty good. Maybe we were just missing a little luck? Anyways, we had pretty much resigned ourselves to missing The Jack this season. And then, at the last moment, Jamie and I decided to head up to Maine and cook the Jack automatic state championship contest. Some would say that I was going all along but just hadn't admitted it to myself yet.

We showed up late and found most all of the teams up in Maine had gorged on lobster, la fin du monde and whiskey the night before. Come 11pm seemed most everyone was "napping". It was a cool, beautiful Maine night and we cooked some good barbecue.

At the Awards the next day I Smell Smoke took 1st Ribs, 1st Brisket, 2nd Chicken. That wins pretty much any contest you can think of. I-Que had a 1st Chicken, no call Ribs, 3rd Pork, no call Brisket. A shot at Reserve. Turns out, the only chance we had at Grand Champion was for I Smell Smoke to really BOMB Pork. I'm sure most people reading this blog know how well I Smell Smoke does in Pork every weekend of the summer. So what are the odds of us winning Grand there? 100-1 at least I would say. Really lucky.

Good luck to all the teams in the draw tomorrow, I hope you get lucky and your bung is pulled.

Charcoal Basket

The basket holds about 25 lbs of lump with a few splits of hickory and oak mixed in. Takes a good hour or so for the fire to burn clean, but once it did the cooker went close to 7 hours on one basket at 250.








-- Post From My iPhone

Jambo Mod

I'm afraid if Jamie Geer sees this post he may drive up to Massachusetts and take my pit away. I saw that he built a pellet hopper add-on for Candy Weavers pit. So I'm thinking my mod can't be as bad as burning pellets in a Jambo pit.

The worlds best charcoal manufacturer operates up in New England - Wicked Good Charcoal - I love the stuff, especially their lump charcoal product. So we built a charcoal basket for the Jambo and plan to give burning some WGC lump a try. I'm hoping to get 4-6 hours of unattended cooking out of a full basket of charcoal. We shall see and I'll report back.

Cooking Lean and Mean

We have been cooking contests this season fitting all of our supplies and gear into the Jambo pit and my Jeep. Its pretty streamlined and works well. I do get jealous of teams with bigger setups, especially if the weather is foul. However, two guys can break down our camp in about 45 minutes and that's the real benefit. The Team next to us this weekend at the Maine State BBQ Championship, Meat at Slims, had a real nice lean and mean setup... here it is: