The Score Card: We aren't that far from getting on stage.

Yeah, I was pissed about the 71 ranking and even moreso that we got smoked by our defectors who finished in the mid 30s, but after seeing our individual judges' scores, it's apparent that we had a winning product, but just not a winning set of judges, a theme that is constant and well known among the cooks at MIM. For example, we had one blind judge gave us an overall impression score of 9.9 out of a possible 10. That's a top ten kinda score. Unfortunately, we had one blind judge go and score us with an 8.8 overall score which is absolute shit. Maybe we had a bad sample in the blind, or maybe we got a shit judge. All I know is that we had some legitimately awesome numbers even three 10s and two 9s in tenderness, which to my knowledge, has never happened before. I wish I still had the scorecards from years past to compare, so if any of you, perhaps jen or john, have them, email them to me.

Well, here are the raw scores:

MEMPHIS IN MAY WCBCC 2012                                                                                      05/22/12
MAGICALLY PIGLICIOUS                                                                                              AREA: 093
RIB CATEGORY                                                                                        PRELIMINARY ROUND
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                               J1          J2         J3         J4         J5         J6         J7  
AREA & PERSONAL APPEARANCE             10*        10         10        BJ         BJ        BJ        BJ
PRESENTATION                                    10          10         9*        BJ         BJ        BJ        BJ        
APPEARANCE OF ENTRY                           9*         10         10         9          10        10        10
TENDERNESS OF ENTRY                            9           10         10        10         8*         8          9
FLAVOR OF ENTRY                                     9*         10         10         9          10         9         10
OVERALL IMPRESSION                             9.5         9.9        10         9.4       9.5       8.8*     9.9

              TOTAL SCORE  -  983.6      '*' INDICATES DROPPED LOW CRITERIA SCORE
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

               ONSITE JUDGE NUMBER (J1-J3) MAY NOT MATCH THE JUDGING ORDER

Although it says that the onsite judge order may not match the numbers, I think these do. The first guy who came to our tent gave me the worst vibe and he was the least personable one of the bunch so it only makes sense that he was in fact, J1 who gave us "low" scores. Pam, was the second judge at the tent and she gave me the best vibe of all. She told me that the ribs were tender (a first from an onsite judge), delicious and were it not for the fact that she had had gastric bipass surgery (yep, that's right stomach stapled and judging a contest celebrating excessive eating) and could physically only eat 4 ounces between 3 tents, she'd have devoured the whole rack. As a side note, she's personal friends with Myron Mixon, so if she loves your ribs, then you have to be happy. Sal, from Chicago was the third judge and he made a point to come back to the tent and tell me that our ribs were the best he'd had all week so it only makes sense that he gave us the overall 10.

So what do all these numbers mean? Well, I for one think that we are right on with our timing and our methods. One area that can be improved is obviously the blind box, but more specifically, the selection of ribs to be sent in. I know that when we finished judging and I started serving up the extra racks to the team, I came across one or two racks that were perfect and I imediately said, "these were blind box ribs." I did the same thing when I pulled out Pam and Sal's racks and based on their scores, it's clear that I was right. My plan in the future is to test each rack before taking them off the smoker that way I can more accurately rank them in order of tenderness. By putting them all on the prep table and trying to figure out what was the best rack was confusing and I'm fairly certain that I didn't rank them properly. I'm also going to stick to 4 bunches of 3 bones each so that our samples are semetrical, and it takes out any chance of a judge grabbing the one bad set in the box. I figure it's best treduce the "moving parts" anywhere I can.

As with my last post, I hope I'll remember to read this next year and remind myself of what worked and what didn't. I'm open to suggestions so y'all feel free to post comments below.

All Pig, Swig, Swine and Viva la Coola!

And 2012 is in the books: thoughts on the week and plans for next year

Although I think our ribs were a hell of a lot better than the 71st place that we were awarded (seriously, if there were 70 ribs out there better than mine, I slam my junk in a car door), we did have our best finish in the team's history and improved on last year by 23 spots. As for everything not related to the rankings, it was a huge success in my mind. We got to use the smoker free of charge, we ate some damn good BBQ and crawfish, and our party made mardi gras look like a baptist church sunday social. Damn right, we threw down hard as hell. I'd like to just toss out a few ideas here and hopefully I'll remember to look at them next year when we start planning out our menus and such.

-I'm all for going with the spare ribs for next year's family night. They were meaty, plentiful, and cheap compared to the baby backs. The one thing I'll say is that 2 cases is probably plenty. I don't think we touched the 3rd case until friday when we reheated them, and I gave the fourth case to Billy today since I have no room in my freezer.

-The 2 giant shoulders from easy way were plenty for thursday, but I really liked having the smaller 2 that we served as leftovers on friday. Cooking them, then chopping and basically just stirring them with their own juices and a little rub after coming off the smoker was phenomenal.

-The burgers were great, but I guess we need to be better on guessing numbers of burgers to buns and who the hell knows what happened with the hotdogs.

-10-12 bags of charcoal was a great amount and the big boxes of wood chunks worked great. We had just the right amount for what we were cooking.

-If we use the same smoker next year, and we have the same wood logs, we need to by an axe. that one that billy had on the trailer was loose and frankly I was scared to swing it for fear of losing the head and killing one of our neighbors. Of course, If we'd have gotten the Pork stars, perhaps we could've finished a little higher.

-We still need to work out a better rack system for the cooler. Maybe we can buy some cheap plastic shelves from Lowes next year.

-2 jugs of Wickers/Hog Wild is sufficient for the week. basically one jug per rib day

-One giant bottle of BBQ sauce is enough for the week assuming that the one from Friday night's dinner makes it back into the cooler before saturday (it did not). I guess what I'm saying is that we need one large(ish) jug for competition and one for serving with food.  And cattleman's was pretty damn good on the competition ribs. It was bland and tomatoey (sp?) enough to fade into the background of the flavor that at least two of our onsite judges really liked. Pam was the most complimentary on site judge that I've ever had, and Sal came back and told me our ribs were the best he'd had all week, so there's that.

I'm exhausted so I'm out. if any of y'all think of anything that worked or was a complete flop this week, PLEASE post it in the comments or as a new blog entry. I want to make this as easy on us next year as possible seeing as how we aren't going to have the luxury of a pro when it comes time to handle all this shit next year.

Thanks
All Pig, Swig, Swine

The Smoker has landed

As of yesterday, the Smoker is in. Obviously, this is a bit more than we are used to in terms of size, but I think the fact that it's a side fire box style, it should be pretty straight forward to use. We'll see how true that assumption is on wednesday, when we start cooking ribs.

Magically Piglicious 8

We are in the final countdown to BBQ Fest 2012 and it's time to start this thing up again. Rememeber that Sunday is move in day and it's also Grizzlies Game 7 (damn right we're winning this shit tonight.) so that means, be on time so we can head up to the game and scalp some mid 2nd quarter tickets or go to a bar to watch us win the series. As y'all know the shirt design is in and it looks great.

Anyway, I gotta go to deal with a bullshit "speeding" ticket for 2 over on the interstate (thanks, MPD) so y'all run with the comment thread to make updates unless you are an author of the "blog" and you want to post more detailed shit. Peace out, PIG SWIG, SWINE.