BBQ Brethren BBQ Team

I'll give it a shot...

It's Phil's team based out of NY. Most often it's BBQ-Brethren.com and at times Phil has/will also use the name Brothers In Smoke.

Phil should provide the historical perspective on the origination & early years as it's his baby.

There's been an evolution of team members (more like cast of characters !!), including out-of-state Brethren Jorge from TX, Parrothead from IL, Chad from FL and a few others. Lots of interesting & funny old threads on those that make for good reading.

In recent years it's been Scott (Yakfishingfool), myself (in retirement on my own), Danny aka "Maestro De Pollo" and most importantly, his son James who is the ever constant and most tenured of all. Muzzlebrake was the official Brethren roadie & teammate for the American Royal & Jack, Jorge was at the AR &nd HoDeDo was also a Brethren for a weekend at the Jack.

A few years ago, I made an attempt to put together a Brethren "national" team that would compete under the same official name aross the country to achieve best chances of maximizing KCBS TOY. With the new KCBS scoring methods it didn't really pan out. Specifically at that Harpoon contest you noted, Sledneck and I cooked as BBQ Brethren.com with Phil there as well. Sled tanked our GC chances that day with his 33rd place steak sauce brisket after a 1st & 3rd place in two other categories.

Apparently, Sledneck needs an official invitation from Phil nowadays :biggrin:

Last Sept.. Big Mista & BigDog cooked at the American Royal under the Brethren name as the the group could not get to KC.

The Brethren team banners really allow tenured members to fly the Brethren flag and still compete under their own name with BBQ Brethen affiliation included.. At the same time, anyone flying the Brethren flag will welcome another member in to have a beer or maybe even learn something.

Colorful history. Thanks for telling.

A) I purposely tanked the brisket just as I tanked your chicken in NH so that you never enjoy winning a GC

B) Invitation? Pfffft He couldnt pay me

are ya feelin the love:icon_cool

Interesting....was there a post between meats and butt's? What's between meat and butts....

Actually Sled is our official Slavik Song Singer!

MilitantSquatter said:

The Brethren team banners really allow tenured members to fly the Brethren flag and still compete under their own name with BBQ Brethen affiliation included.. At the same time, anyone flying the Brethren flag will welcome another member in to have a beer or maybe even learn something.

Click to expand...

Are orders still being taken and filled for banners with the team name on it? I looked at the thread for it the other day and the process appeared stalled. I was thinking about checking into one.

MilitantSquatter said:

I'll give it a shot...

It's Phil's team based out of NY. Most often it's BBQ-Brethren.com and at times Phil has/will also use the name Brothers In Smoke.

Phil should provide the historical perspective on the origination & early years as it's his baby.

There's been an evolution of team members (more like cast of characters !!), including out-of-state Brethren Jorge from TX, Parrothead from IL, Chad from FL and a few others. Lots of interesting & funny old threads on those that make for good reading.

In recent years it's been Scott (Yakfishingfool), myself (in retirement on my own), Danny aka "Maestro De Pollo" and most importantly, his son James who is the ever constant and most tenured of all. Muzzlebrake was the official Brethren roadie & teammate for the American Royal & Jack, Jorge was at the AR &nd HoDeDo was also a Brethren for a weekend at the Jack.

A few years ago, I made an attempt to put together a Brethren "national" team that would compete under the same official name aross the country to achieve best chances of maximizing KCBS TOY. With the new KCBS scoring methods it didn't really pan out. Specifically at that Harpoon contest you noted, Sledneck and I cooked as BBQ Brethren.com with Phil there as well. Sled tanked our GC chances that day with his 33rd place steak sauce brisket after a 1st & 3rd place in two other categories.

Apparently, Sledneck needs an official invitation from Phil nowadays :biggrin:

Last Sept.. Big Mista & BigDog cooked at the American Royal under the Brethren name as the the group could not get to KC.

The Brethren team banners really allow tenured members to fly the Brethren flag and still compete under their own name with BBQ Brethen affiliation included.. At the same time, anyone flying the Brethren flag will welcome another member in to have a beer or maybe even learn something.

Click to expand...

Sledneck said:

A) I purposely tanked the brisket just as I tanked your chicken in NH so that you never enjoy winning a GC

B) Invitation? Pfffft He couldnt pay me

Click to expand...

I know just how he did it too... Bet he turned in his version of burnt ends... lol

Rub said:

Are orders still being taken and filled for banners with the team name on it? I looked at the thread for it the other day and the process appeared stalled. I was thinking about checking into one.

Click to expand...

If offered the honor, we would also like to order one.

I prefer to think of myself as driver/public relations..........but roadie is cool:mrgreen:

and don't forget being packed in like sardines on the barren hot waste lands of southeastern pennsylvania...... Africa HOT!

Mokan Meathead was also part of the 2009 American Royal team.

Hodedo was Poobah Ameritas at the 2008 GAB Invitational.

Jorge is more of a "groupie".

Good catches Todd...

"Groupie" ?? I'll let you refer to Jorge as that.. never gonna come out of my mouth or keyboard !!! That man has guns... and knows how to use them !!! To me...just a great teammate. Here's a pic of Jorge keeping a super straight face while we made a box at Harpoon '07. He should have been laughing knowing the legs were gonna fail (again). Needless to say, we had several top three calls... chicken wasn't it.

Jorge was right there all evening trying to tame a raging 350+ fire with the first attempt using the 50 lb super thick charcoal maze basket from hell for the Spicebox.

Muzzlebrake said:

I prefer to think of myself as driver/public relations..........but roadie is cool:mrgreen:

and don't forget being packed in like sardines on the barren hot waste lands of southeastern pennsylvania...... Africa HOT!

Click to expand...

Does Phil pay you more as official Brethren Rig Driver/Director of PR than as a Brethren Roadie ??


Man, you get around...:biggrin: Forgot about Yardley & the brutal heat !!! We got to meet the BBQ Bandit (who stirred a mean tomato sauce) & OC Pig Assassins for the first time and we stole Sledneck's WSM's.

I cooked with Mista at a small IBCA contest in Palm Desert under the Brethren Banner
We beat a rookie named Harry Soo for the GC by just a few points

MilitantSquatter said:

Good catches Todd...

I'll let you refer to Jorge as "groupie" though... Never gonna come out of my mouth or keyboard !!! Regardless a great teammate. Here's a pic of Jorge keeping a straight face while we made a box at Harpoon '07. He should have been laughing knowing the legs were gonna fail. Needless to say, we had several top three calls... chicken wasn't it..
Jorge was right there all evening trying to tame a raging 350+ fire with the first attempt using the 50 lb super thick charcoal maze basket from hell for the Spicebox.




Does Phil pay you more as official Brethren Rig Driver/Director of PR than as a Brethren Roadie ??


Man, you get around...:biggrin: Forgot about Yardley & the brutal heat !!! We got to meet the BBQ Bandit (who stirred a mean tomato sauce) & OC Pig Assassins for the first time and we stole Sledneck's WSM's.

Click to expand...

Ah yes, part of the reason I tanked the brisket at harpoon .Paybacks a bitch aint it? :tongue:

MilitantSquatter said:

Does Phil pay you more as official Brethren Rig Driver/Director of PR than as a Brethren Roadie ??

Click to expand...

nah pay is the same but it looks much better on business cards and credit applications

Plowboy said:

Jorge is more of a "groupie".

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since when do groupies get to top?

Are you guys having fun! Heres my addition.. From the beginning, to give some background. When the group started, i was the first of the orignal 40 members to venture out and compete. That was back in 2003, and i was hoping more of us would start to compete after. So the vision was to eventually have "Brethren Teams".. and the teams would register as BBQ-Brethern - Insert team name here. I never dreamed we would have the membership or followingt we have now, so by the 5 or 6 teams i expected, i thought having the "bbq Brethren" preface on the team names would goruip uss together in team listings.

So I registered our first contest as BBQ Brethren - Brothers in Smoke. Well, the name was to long for the computer program used for the contest and it got truncated to BBQ Brethren - Brothe. Needless to say, that wass goofy, so the organizer just shortened it to BBQ-Brethren. That year, I continued to use BBQ-Brethren and the following year i extended it to BBQ-Brethren.com. Since then, both have been used.

First contest was Me and Parrothead. We walked away with 2 firsts, a 3rd and 5th. If it was KCBS sanctioned, we would have GC'ed, but that contest took highest individual score of all 4 catagories as winner.

With a win like that our firrst time out, we were bit by the bug. Next contest was Podunk Blues festival in CT. Team there was Josh(colt45) and Paul(MasterMarinader). We took 3rd overall there followed by another 3rd(maybe 4th) in Ashbury park at Guitarbque where Chad flew up from Florida and Rob Fernandez(BrooklynQ) joined us.

The team for a few years was Myself, James and BrooklynQ as the regulars and several brethren flew in or drove in to join us at contests. The team was, and stil is open for members to come cook with us at any contest. The core team for the past 3(maybe 4) years has been me, my son James and yakfishingfool. Vinny came on board after he retired(yeah right), and Maestro de Pollo(Danny/Speedo) is here for 2 years now.

But we have had a wide cast of characters on our roster. Muzzlebrake, jorge, hodedo, BigDog, BBQ-Bandit, BigMista, MokanMeathead, Sledneck, Smoker.... im sure theres more. The few times i wanted to compete as just father and son, I used Brothers in Smoke as the team name, but anytime BBQ Brethren.com is competing, any tenured member is welcome to join us..(Up to 6 total per contest, otherwise we are tripping all over each other.)



Heres pics of our very first contest.. its pretty funny when u look at those boxes, and the setup of the BYC on the Uhaul, and our camp looked like a soup kitchen exploded.

I apologize for the spam that got injected into our photo gallery comment section. That was addressed.

Just taggin along. Here is a link to my pics from when Thom Emery and I competed as BBQ-Brethren.com. We won GC! You will also see some pics of Harry Soo from BBQ Pitmasters. It was his first contest and he was RGC.

http://s77.photobucket.com/albums/j67/bigmista/Palm desert/?start=80