[stlgreg]

Originally Posted by NelsonC

My advice to anyone wanting to get into competition BBQ is to first go take a KCBS judging class and judge a few contests. At each contest, identify the experienced judges at your dable, and between categories, open a dialog with the other judges at about which entries scored highly and why. For me, that eliminated a lot of the guess work and gave me a solid understanding of exactly what I was shooting for in my own cooking. Good luck!

I could not agree more. I learned more from judging that really anything else. I have found my neighbors are just happy to be eating BBQ and they think everythink i make tastes great. But by being a judge you can a real feel for what flavors score well.