My money’s on number 34 as the winner of the People’s Choice award. That was a mighty fine morsel of shoulder I tasted. I stopped by the tent–the line was probably 100 deep to get in–to see how the whole shebang worked. And I found out.

55 teams cooked shoulders, all from the same place to avoid variation in the quality of meat, and lined up outside the tent earlier today to get inspected by the health department (165 degrees at the door, and 135 degrees at serving time) and to begin the super-secret process of getting their number. No one present in the tent knows which number corresponds to which team, and the team members don’t know their number, either. Further, each table is served samples from a predetermined set of numbers, and you don’t get to pick your table. This is a foolproof system–rigging would be impossible.

Last year 2,800 folks came through the tent to taste and judge. Yesterday’s rain put a damper on the crowd, but volunteer Sue Binnie (pictured above, explaining the rules) expects about 1,500 people to cast their votes before the contest ends tonight.

“This is prestigious,” said volunteer Cathy Walsh. “Teams want to win the People’s Choice award as much as anything else.”

They’ve been at it for 10 years, but this year The Pink Ladies have given up ribs and gone exotic. Here’s their story.

After last night’s storm and the ensuing cold front, today is perfect weather for funneling beer. After all, you have to do something at Barbecue Fest when the food is still in production.

And so a handful of teams in the party mood go on a poker run. Our booth is one of the stops. Participants enter, take hits from the beer bong, get a card. Invariably, someone says “It feels so good when it hits your lips,” quoting Old School’s Frank the Tank. 

Steve acts as master of ceremonies and there is a lot of hooting and hollering. The party will be starting early this evening.

So far, things are looking brighter for The Ques Brothers, a team that went into the competition without a major sponsor this year. John Bragg, owner of the restaurant Circa, joined our team and has donated tables, chairs, booze, cups, etc. Last night, our volunteer bartenders Frank and Mikey talked up the tip jar as if it were a Presidential candidate. We made enough to buy more beer for this evening. Considering how packed our booth was last night, we need lots of tips tonight as well.

On the cooking front, Willie’s rig had a couple of minor breakdowns yesterday. The electric rotisserie quit spinning. As one of our cooks, Chicago Dave, pointed out earlier this afternoon, as he prepared a half dozen pork shoulders for the smoker, “If this thing quits turning in the middle of the night, we’re going to have a disaster.” The shoulders will smoke 16 hours before we serve them to the three judges tomorrow morning. 

The entire park and several miles downwind smell like barbecue. Hickory, mesquite and apple wood smoke billows from hundreds of chimneys. Whole hogs are splayed out, ready for the giant smokers. The crowd builds. Tonight’s feast will be larger than last night’s, if that is even possible. I’ve been assigned to watch the door tonight. We expect a throng. 

It’s been wet and cold today, but Joey Sulipeck promises — as much as a weather forecaster will actually promise — that the remainder of the barbecue contest will be fit for outdoor consumption.

Sometimes, you just gotta dance.

Does anyone remember ANY Memphis in May BBQ or Music Festival that didn’t get soaked? I’m talking any year. Tell me when it was, because I’ve forgotten. This was what it looked like after we got hit with a front that brought so much rain we couldn’t see the bridge from the tent. And did I take a picture of that to show you? Uh–NO WAY! I’m looking pretty rough already, just from being caught in the sprinkle and I was not getting out in the downpour.

But here’s the aftermath. I’m glad to report that the skies are clear(ish), and that I’m off to a tent that’s serving up seafood at 6. After that, catch me on the wine blog at 7.

Walking around cuetown is a visual feast, along with the other kind (if you’re connected with a team). Here are a few choice scenes as the MIMWCBCC gets underway.

Our cooking team reconvened back in January to gird ourselves for the 2008 Memphis in May World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest. Some readers might remember the story I wrote last year about putting together a pit crew from scratch.

A quick recap: we were a swarm of barflies who drunkenly thought it’d be a great idea if we convinced 30 friends or so to pitch in $200 and try to beat some of the best pork smokers in the country. Scroll down or click here to read last year’s posts.

In spite of a huge case of overconfidence, our team, The Ques Brothers, placed 12th in the country in the pork shoulder category. For first timers, that is what anyone would call outstanding. It made a great story, at least. We were all happy: the team, the sponsor, the readers.

And then came The Ques Brothers’ sophomore slump. This year we’re cooking by the hem of our aprons.

I was talking to Diane Hampton, executive vice president of Memphis in May, and she laughed when I told her some of our financial problems. “You’re finally realizing how good you had it the first year,” she said. “Nobody, comes out of chute like you guys did.”

With a price tag of around $15,000, a good-looking barbecue team is not for those with light wallets. Not unless you manage to land a corporate sponsor. Businesses sponsor BBQ cooking teams for different reasons. Last year our sponsor gave us a huge chunka change to make the front of our booth a billboard for the company. We also had to feed employees on “sponsor night.”

Some big companies like Valero Refined (who came in 11th place) hire contractors to build party pavilions for employees and investors. It’s a prestige thing.

We found no corporate sponsors this year. The past week, we’ve gone through an agonizing reexamination of the budget. We are now hacking away amenities in terms of kegs of beer (1 keg=$40). As in, “Can we do without these $90 team buttons?” “Hell yeah, that’s two kegs right there.”

Everyone on the team, however, refused to buy the idea that we could do the fest with just a tent, a bar and a smoker. We are luxury hogs, all of us.

“We have to have a second level!” was the unanimous declaration at a planning meeting last week. Barbecue Fest is not your domain if you don’t have an upper deck upon which to stand and look over it.

Fortunately, one of our team members had a giant steel structure sitting in a field down in Mississippi. We just had to go pick it up — all 800 pounds of it. And put it together. And weld handrails onto it. And make it structurally sound. And paint it. And lay a plywood deck.

I feel most sorry for Danny, a general contractor and millwright, who joined our team for some much needed relaxation and vacation and ended up spending the last four days constructing our booth with a handful of others. Last night, at 9:30 p.m., I was popping his back atop the unfinished deck. “Usually I leave this to my chiropractor,” he groaned.

We’re all hoping to have most of it finished by tonight (Wednesday) — for friends and family night — when, to get things started, we’re smoking a half-dozen turkeys just for fun. For everyone else, the contest kicks off on Thursday.

Meanwhile, here are some links to whet your appetite as all the teams get their smokers in gear for the Super Bowl of Swine.

General overview of Barbecue Fest Events.

Jon W. Sparks writes about a cooking team from Belgium.

Food critic Jennifer Biggs blogs from Barbecue Fest.

Fellow Ques Brother and Downtown blogger Paul Ryburn’s drunk posts from the Fest.

Artists on team Sow Luau create crazy pig heads.

Story about company that rents monster tents to barbecue teams.

List of 2008 BBQ teams and where from.

As newcomers to the Barbecue Championship, most of the members on my team the Ques Brothers were elated when we heard that the judges had given us perfect tens in all the barbecue judging categories but one. He gave us a single nine for the look of our pork shoulder’s “bark.” He wanted a mahogany color. Ours was black.

Still, I thought that with 258 teams in the contest, a near perfect score must be big news.

Meanwhile, when our festival veteran Steve learned our scores, he said darkly: “That last judge just cut our throats.”

Team leader Chuck once said that getting into the top ten — out of around 60 pork shoulder teams — would fulfill his goal. He’d even be happy with top 20.

After the awards were given out Saturday night, we went back to our booth and waited for the list to be posted. Word spread quickly when it was, and a few of us went out to look for ourselves.

Outside the judging tent, a crowd had gathered.

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Saturday morning, the Ques Brothers were hurriedly preparing for the judges at the 2007 World Barbecue Cooking Contest down in Tom Lee Park. Several members of my freshman cooking team had stayed up all night making sure nothing went wrong — that the rotisserie kept spinning, the smoke kept rising, and the food was the best that could possibly come out of our oxy-moronic “Southern Yankee” smoker, made in Indiana.

After 19 hours slowly turning in the applewood, hickory and cherry smoke, our 17 pound pork shoulder was as good as it was ever going to get. (more…)