Schedule Update

We have changed our schedule a bit to end our first full season so I thought I would post an update. We have 6 competitions remaining:

August 28-29 Big Island BBQ Albert Lea, MN
Sept 11-12 South Dakota State BBQ Championship Vermillion, SD
Sept 18-19 SMSU SmokeFest Marshall, MN
Oct 2-3 American Royal Invitational Kansas City, MO
Oct 3-4 American Royal Open Kansas City, MO
Oct 16-17 Barn Burner Bar-B-Q Libertyville, IL (unless we get into the Jack Daniels Invitational, in that case we will go to Lynchburg TN later in October and skip this one).

As you can see from the Power Rankings to the right of this post, we have slipped a bit in the rankings due to sitting out the last several weeks. The next month will move us back up that list with a little luck! My goal is to finish the year in the top 75 teams and to finish in the top 25 in Brisket. We will have to cook our butts off to get there, but you gotta have goals, right?

Back on the trail

After four weeks off TippyCanoe BBQ Crew will be back on the KCBS trail this weekend. We will be competing in the Big Island Barbeque contest held in Albert Lea Minnesota.

This is our last contest prior to the Jack Daniel's World Invitational Draw which will be held next Thursday September 3rd. We have our name in the hat in Minnesota from our win in Owatonna In May and would love to get a second bung in the draw. You can read more about the teams in the draw here http://pelletenvy.blogspot.com/2009/08/are-you-in-draw-do-you-want-to-be.html
Rod did a great job of putting a list together. The condensed story on the draw is that they will take all the winners from each state and draw out a representative for that state (they also draw for a winner "from" each state if not all are represented after the draw).

Up in Smoke BBQ Bash, Mason City Recap

We cooked the event in Mason City last week and had a great time. The Bash is held in East Park and it is a great setting for a BBQ contest. We had some issues with power early on Friday but we got those resolved and all went well from there. Being so close to home and work we had many visitors and it all went by very quickly. Our turn-ins were very consistent; nothing great in my mind, but nothing terrible either. The judges agreed and we were very happy to finish 7th overall and 3rd in Brisket in this extermely tough field. In fact, our total score in Mason City was only 1 point shy of our Grand Championship score in Owatonna in May.

Up in Smoke BBQ - Mason City, IA
Out of 65 Teams
7th Place - OVERALL
29th Place - CHICKEN
20th Place - RIBS
21th Place - PORK
3rd Place - BRISKET

On a side note, I keep bragging about the competition we've faced this year so I thought I better put some facts behind it. KCBS just released the updated Team of the Year standings for 2009. We have competed against 13 of the top 25 teams in the country to this point (and most of them several times).

Waterloo and Laporte City Recap

Well we surived the double contest weekend. We had a good experience at both competitions and it was good to get our feet wet with two in one weekend prior to the Royal in October. I will say I would not want to do two contests in one weekend on a regular basis. We were totally shot by the time it was all over Sunday afternoon. It probably didn't help matters that we didn't have a strong showing in either event. Below are the gory details, all in all two of our poorest performances of the year.

BBQ'Loo & Blues Too - Waterloo, IA
Out of 35 Teams
12th Place - OVERALL
7th Place - CHICKEN
21th Place - RIBS
9th Place - PORK
20th Place - BRISKET


BBQ in the Park - La Porte City, IA
Out of 25 Teams
14th Place - OVERALL
11th Place - CHICKEN
8th Place - RIBS
20th Place - PORK
14th Place - BRISKET