Gettin’ Sauced Recap

I can’t think of a more fun way to spend a Sunday than as an official judge at a food competition.  Especially a food competition put on by the nice folks of Man Up Texas BBQ.

The inaugural event was a great success.  45 sauces, 3 bands, hundreds of attendees and good times had by all.  Cheers to Drew and the rest of his Man Up Texas BBQ buddies for putting on such a fun celebration of the meat, smoke, fire and sauce that make Texas BBQ such a magical thing.

That’s Drew on the right with his proud Papa.

Franklin BBQ in east Austin was the backdrop for (what I hope will be the first annual) Gettin’ Sauced.  Hipsters flocked to the event like moths to a flame.  Ya’ll, I was overwhelmed by the hipsters.  Despite having spent four years of college in Austin, the past six years in San Antonio seem to have erased my memory of the thriving hipster culture.  These were not your typical vegan lifestyle living, fixed gear bike riding, angsty music listening hipsters… these were the best hipsters ever:  BBQ loving, meat eating, beer drinking, country music appreciating hipsters.  This Waspy Redhead was just tickled to death by them.  Who would have thought?

So how about the sauces?

45 entries were broken into 2 categories, bottled and fresh.

Served up on white bread with saltine crackers to cleanse your palate, 45 sauces is quite an undertaking let me tell you.

The attendees each had scorecards, and they were charged with picking their top 5 over all sauces.  The judges were tasked with ranking the top ten sauces in each category – so ten fresh and ten bottled sauces.

Taking my role as an official judge very seriously, I developed a system for tasting, evaluating and ranking the entries.

I first sampled each sauce, breaking my tastings into groups of 10.  Thank goodness for the saltines and for the free St. Arnold lawnmower (one of my favorite beers).  While tasting, I would make brief notes along the lines of “too sweet, well balanced, very hot, tangy” etc.  Sauces that I thought were good were starred so that I could go back and do a second tasting and then rank them 1-10.

The overwhelming site of 45 sauces laid out before one of my fellow judges.  I’m glad I stacked mine up when I was finished, it helped me feel like I wasn’t eating my weight in wonder bread and BBQ sauce.

By the end of the night, I had tasted all 45 sauces – and 20 of those were tasted 2-3 times.  OMG the heartburn.  It probably didn’t help that I had eaten a huge brunch that day at Moonshine with my beloved friend Kelly.

In case you’re wondering who was declared victorious…

The audience’s favorites

1. The Salt Lick – Original (Driftwood) 2. The Salt Lick – Spicy (Driftwood) 3. SuckleBusters – Spicy Peach (Coppell) 4. Black’s Barbecue – Chipotle Mustard (Lockhart) 5. Burnet Feed Store BBQ – Original (Burnet)The judges’ panel favorites

Bottled (23 sauces entered):

1. Joseph’s Riverport BBQ – Original (Jefferson)
2. Texas Pride Barbecue – Hot & Spicy (Adkins)
3. SuckleBuster’s – Original (Coppell)
4. Black’s Barbecue – Original (Lockhart)
5 (tie). Don Strange of Texas, Inc. – Pequin (San Antonio)
5 (tie). Stubb’s Legendary Kitchen – Original (Austin)
7 (tie). Wooden Spoon – Hickory (Austin)
7 (tie). Black’s Barbecue – Pepper (Lockhart)
9. Stubb’s Legendary Kitchen – Spicy (Austin)
10. Stubb’s Legendary Kitchen – Honey Pecan (Austin)

Fresh (22 sauces entered):

1. The Salt Lick – Original (Driftwood)
2. Luling Bar-B-Q – Original (Luling)
3. McBee’s Bar-B-Que – Original (New Braunfels)
4. Burnet Feed Store BBQ – Spicy (Burnet)
5. The Salt Lick – Spicy (Driftwood)
6. Johnny T’s BBQ – Spicy (Round Rock)
7 (tie). The Swinging Door – Original (Richmond)
7 (tie). Burnet Feed Store BBQ – Original (Burnet)
9. Johnny T’s BBQ – Original (Round Rock)
10. Old School BBQ & Grill – Original (Austin)

So The Salt Lick was the big winner of the night.  Taking home the top two spots in the audience favorites, as well as the top ranking in the fresh category for the judges panel.  I’m not surprised really, as soon as I tasted the blind sample of the original Salt Lick sauce, I wrote down one word in my notes “favorite”.

Thanks again for inviting me to participate as a judge.  I had a blast!

Tagged as: bbq