Recent content by MikeBarger

It was a great contest and the weather was great.....should have been there :) Dave and Peg Rogers always do a nice job.

Anyone cooking/judging at the Omaha, NE contest on January 25?

And how do you get on the invite list? It looks great!

My 22 inch WSM only has the water pan in if I'm using both grate levels (rarely). 96% of the time I use it like a drum smoker whether it's at 225 or 300 degrees (generally shoot for 250 to 275).

Just one opinion, it's going to take KCBS overhauling the judging process. A small pool of paid judges or eliminate the outlier judges until the judging pool is reasonably consistent.

Groucho, a DeSoto man.

If allowed to dry thoroughly, the briquets will work as normal. I had a bag I let get rained on enough the bag fell apart. Scattered them out in the sun for a few days. Worked fine.

Actually, in a tie situation the low scores are brought back into the total. This wouldn't happen often but is a possibility.

I NEVER put anything on the grates if there is anything but light blue smoke coming out the top vent.

You probably already do this, squeezing the rack together (end to end) will make them a little shorter.

If two locations count as a chain, Big Bob Gibson's out of Decatur, AL tops my list. When we travel to NC for vacation, we drop down about 200 miles out of the way to eat there.

I'm not adventurous with my WSM. My only change from normal; if I'm only using the top grate to smoke, I don't use the water pan at all. Treat it like a drum smoker. Using both grates I use the pan, sometimes with and sometimes without water.

I've helped at a half dozen new judge classes and I can tell you cooks, from teams, are the harshest judges during the class training. I'd like to see some mechanism to curb those judges that are outliers at every event they judge. The teams deserve consistent/predictable scoring at events.

This comment concerned me some. "The wing box was not as full and appearance scores took a hit." I've judged about 108 events and when listening to the tape recording, prior to judging, don't think I've ever heard anything about boxes being full, or not full, affecting scores for appearance...

In 23 I judged the event in Lubbock, TX. All the chicken at our table were boneless thighs beat out flat and grilled. No sauce, but some rub. Nice change of pace from the chicken in NE Kansas and western Missouri. Your chicken looks great, easy 9 for appearance.