I had been selected to judge the American Royal Sauce competition on the 20th but was out of the country so Kim found me a slot judging Open Meats yesterday (10/5). I re-read Hub's tutorials on judging to get my mind in the right place and away I went. Was a real hoot and quite a venue for my first BBQ Judging. There were over 650 teams and as many judges to judge chicken, ribs, pork, brisket and sausage. Some takeaways: Don't start off taking 2 bites from each presentation because by the time I got to the 27th presentation it was getting hard to get excited about another bite and doing the cooks complete justice for their efforts. Out of the 6 chicken boxes, the worst one was fantastic and hope someday I can get my chicken to get anywhere close. For the pork, brisket and ribs, nothing really knocked my socks off and made me realize that I don't do too bad a job myself with the "Q". I did give one rib all 9's. The sausage was a real disappointment as the 3 presentations we received were really poor. Anyway, great experience and looking forward to my next judging opportunity
