Hello,
18th & Swine walked away from the Cure` of Ars Holy Smokes competition as Grand Champions! Holy Smokes is my favorite comp of the year because it is held by my parish and I compete against my friends, neighbors, and fellow parishioners. This year carried extra weight since the top three teams go on to compete in an intra-parish competition in September. Like all of the teams competing Saturday, we really wanted to be one of those teams. We’d come close to the top the last two years but not close enough.
All signs pointed towards a horrible showing at Cure`. We usually meet early in the week before a comp to discuss what we need to bring and how we’ll manage the trip, but we did not meet. Thursday night we usually corral everything we need for the competition, including the meat and the smokers, but that did not happen. We showed up to compete on Friday missing some of our necessities and our wonderful family members stepped up to help us obtain what we needed.
Friday night was fantastic. We enjoyed setting up the booth, talking to our neighbors and fellow competitors, and having our family and friends turn out to party. We usually bring in around 45 people and this year was no exception. We had so many guests we spilled out into the walkway. It was a great time.
I started my brisket in the wee hours of the morning and tried to catch a few winks. The drum I use is great at holding temps and I had unfortunately set the airflow too high before I went to sleep. I awoke a few hours later to a smoker at 340 degrees, which is not the temperature I normally maintain, and I’m not sure how long it had been at that temp. I almost choked my fire out trying to bring down the temp and created some harsh smoke. This was not the way I had envisioned my brisket prep for the comp.
One of our biggest fans, Roland, showed up at 8am to make sure we had breakfast and juice to keep chugging along. He also brought his lovable St. Bernard, Zor, along for moral support. Roland comes to almost every practice and competition, which means he’s seen our highs and our lows. He wished us luck and went to mow his lawn before the heat of the day began, which turned out to be a pretty hot day. The temp for Saturday was 91 with high humidity, not including all the smokers, people, and pavement in close proximity of one another.
Later that morning I had two new internal meat thermometers die. My teammates stepped up, helped me cobble together one internal meat thermometer from leftovers, and we pressed on. It was smooth sailing from that point forward. Friends and family popped in throughout the day with water and popsicles, smokers behaved, meats hit their plateaus and gave up the ghost, ribs pulled away from the bone nicely, and sauces came together.
We have really stepped up our presentations and procedures in the last couple of months and it showed Saturday. We waited for the results by talking to our neighbors and friends, sampling each other’s entries, and hoping for the best.
We’ve done well at Holy Smokes the last two years and while we were confident, we knew it was up to the judges to determine our fate. We started out with a bang as Jess got a fifth place call in Sausage and 2nd place in Pork. However Charlie and I did not get a call in our categories of Ribs and Brisket, so we were wondering if this was a repeat of the last contest were we both received poor scores and hurt our overall team scores. Holy Smokes calls out the top ten overall teams and we did not hear 18th & Swine as the team names kept dwindling to the last few calls. I really wanted to represent Cure in September and I sat there listening to the 3rd and 2nd place names get called. My wife looked at me and asked if I thought we won as the second place team received their trophy and I said no, thinking this truly was a repeat of the last comp in Platte City. I thought we turned in pretty good entries but you just never know. It turned out we did just fine.
I was very surprised when Father Greg called our name. We’ve been a team on the upswing but haven’t heard our names called often over the 3 ½ years we’ve been competing so I was shocked. It is an understatement to say it feels great to win a grand championship. It’s a vindication of the hard work and effort for our entire team. It’s been a long learning curve for us, taking our lumps along the way and learning from our mistakes, but we are finally hitting our stride.
The icing on the cake was watching my neighbors win the Spirit of Barbecue award, which goes to a team who demonstrates passion and dedication to barbecue. Congrats to Two Men and a Fridge!
Happy smoking,
Jer
Wow man, that is awesome.
Congratulations!