Second Competition: First Reserve Grand!

Really this is a message of thanks for all you guys who replied and PMed with me after my first comp recap on the boards. I can't tell you how invaluable your help was in pulling out my first reserve and also placing fourth in ribs and chicken and first in pork! The contest was the Great Miller Lite Chili and BBQ Cook-off and it was a first year licensed KCBS even with the Braziers as the awesome reps and Big John Stancil as the organizer; basically that means some experience people were running it. There were 100% certified KCBS judges on-site and I felt like it was very well ran for a first year comp.

I've only competed in one backyard comp so far and expected this to be mostly more inexperienced teams looking to get their feet wet at a smaller comp. I was definitely wrong on that count: there were a decent of amount of teams that consistently place in the top ten in some of the bigger comps down here in Georgia. I was instantly discouraged, but Philip Brazier (the contest rep) was encouraging and basically said this would be a good opportunity to see how I stacked up against some more experienced teams.

The awards started early so I barely made it back to hear my call for pork and reserve. I was so surprised I had no clue what was going on and Philip graciously grabbed me and directed me to the right place! Anyways, thanks again for all the help everyone here offered and also need to give a shout out to Darian from Kosmos- I used a modified version of his pork process.

@CivilWarBBQ- Good call on the Jim and not John. That is one rather large human. I wrote that up when I'd been awake for something like 40 hours straight.

I also need to make sure and thank @fnbish and @lakedogs for their help as well. Sadly rather than savoring victory I've been obsessing over what I need to do to get my ribs and chicken up to par!