3rd Annual Stagecoach BBQ Championship

This was the first sanctioned event of the 2009 season for The Smokepranos and it was a big one. The Stagecoach contest on April 25th and 26th in Indio, CA is one of the largest BBQ competitions on the west coast. There are three different competitions in one weekend. There was a KCBS sanctioned contest with 52 teams and one IBCA sanctioned contest with 59 teams on Saturday and one KCBS contest with 50 teams on Sunday, and we competed in all three. The Saturday KCBS comp was pretty standard we used some our recipes that we had used last year with a few little tweaks here and there. The results were not what we were hoping for but were not too bad, we finished 29th overall and our highest finish in a meat category was 17th in ribs. That was not bad for us because ribs are our weakest category. In the IBCA comp was the same type of outcome, not what we were expecting. Sundays KCBS comp we made some changes and with a little luck going our way the outcome was some what different, we ended up as the Reserve Grand Champion (2nd place). In the meat categories we finished 4th in ribs, 8th in pork and 4th in brisket. This was a huge surprise to us especially with what had happened in the other two comps. It was definitely our best finish by far and what made it even better was the guy who won was one of the top five BBQers in the nation. We learned a lot from the Sunday comp and we hope we can continue with the success.