Last week as the rain was threatening to flood out parts of Maryland, we packed up and headed to the hills of West Virginia for our first trip to the Pickin’ in the Panhandle bluegrass festival and KCBS competition. We were coming off a good performance at Smokin’ on the Bay and knew that our competition would be equally as strong, if not stronger in West Virginia. This is a unique location for a KCBS competition because it is the one and only West Virginia state competition; which means the grand champion automatically gets a ticket into the Jack Daniels invitational next year. Because of this, a lot of big hitters show up and whether you are a well known team or new to the circuit, you show up to compete!
The teams begin to stack up at Lazy A Campground
We had the pleasure of setting up camp next to the Tipsy Pig, a rookie team who was cooking in their first KCBS competition. We’ve been so lucky to meet incredibly nice people and teams who’ve helped show us the ropes since we started competing in 2010. Although we are still considered a rookie team, we’ve made it a point to go out of our way to pay back the generosity we’ve been shown and help out new teams as much as we can. We may not give up ALL of our secrets, but if we can help, we certainly will. We shared a taste of all four food categories as well as photos of a couple of our boxes … And we were lucky enough to get a taste of their food as well. They did a fantastic job by being part of a three way tie for 10th place in pork. Impressive for a first competition!
A piece of our 7th place chicken.
We were fortunate enough to get two ‘calls’ on this trip. The very first call of the awards ceremony was for the peoples choice pork butt, and PepperMonkeyBBQ won! That earned us another pig trophy for our small collection, but more importantly free entry into next years competition! Our next and only other call was the 7th place chicken, which we were both proud of. Our other categories did well, but not well enough to place in the top ten: 27th in ribs, 18th in pork, and 16th in brisket. Overall we placed 14th, which given the level of competition, we were still happy with, but are really hoping to work our way back to the top ten for our final two competitions this year.
Six racks of ribs ready for the smoke!
We really enjoyed our first trip to Pickin’ in the Panhandle. Jen and the rest of the crew clearly worked very hard to make it an enjoyable event for everyone. Congratulations to Chix, Swine and Bovine on their Grand Champion and earning another trip to the Jack. Congrats to Just Smokin’ Around for coming in a close second. We are looking forward to cashing in our free entry into the 2012 Pickin in the Panhandle. Now it’s time to practice for our upcoming trip to Harrisburg, PA.
