Randall Bowman: This is a extended family the barbecue community and the Jack Daniel's community and this is the one time of year where we all get to get together and celebrate.
Lucas Hendrickson: The official name is the 30th annual Jack Daniel's World Championship Invitational BBQ. But to those in the world of competition barbecue, it is simply "The Jack." For three days in October for the last three decades, Lynchburg, Tennessee becomes the nexus of the barbecue universe for teams and judges from around the globe, and it's a destination they all want to reach. On this episode, we take a behind-the-scenes look at the event some call the Olympics of BBQ. We talk with those who make competition cooking their full-time pursuit, others who realize it can be a very expensive hobby yet still love it anyway, and to those merely scratching the surface of its worldwide potential. At the end of the day The Jack becomes about close-knit friends and extended family, and the good times that can be had Around the Barrel.
Welcome to the Season Two premiere of Around the Barrel, the official podcast from the makers of Jack Daniel's. I'm your host, Lucas Hendrickson. This season we will continue our conversations with creators and characters woven into the world of Jack Daniel's, but we wanted to kick this set of shows off with something a little different. Since 1988, on the 4th weekend of October, the sleepy middle Tennessee town most known as the home of Jack Daniel's undergoes a dramatic transformation.
Lynchburg gets overrun, in a very good way, with people who love the art and science of applying heat and smoke to meat. In short, it becomes the temporary home of some of the best barbecue in the world. The Jack Daniel's World Championship Invitational BBQ, or "The Jack" for short, is one of the most prestigious, not to mention difficult to qualify for, barbecue competitions in the world.
It's one of the highlights of the Kansas City Barbecue Society's annual calendar. KCBS is the world's largest sanctioning body for competition barbecue. Its rules overseeing more than 500 competitions each year. In order to compete at The Jack, teams have to win their way in, and even then, they need some luck in order to make their way to Lynchburg. Randall Bowman, current board president of KCBS:
Randall: The prestige that's been kind of built around KCBS and the Jack Daniel's Invitational is just huge. It's got this mystique around it that is really neat. You don't see it with contests but I think that the branding of "The Jack," combined with the exclusivity of, you have to have not just been a champion, but you also have to either have been a multiple, multiple champion to automatically qualify, or you have to have won enough to increase your odds of getting drawn into it. It's rare that a guy that's won one Grand Championship ever gets here.
Lucas: At a regular KCBS event, teams will compete in four standard categories: chicken, pork shoulder or butts, beef ribs, and beef brisket. The Jack adds three additional categories: sauce, desserts, and a Cook's Choice option, all of which must include a little Jack Daniel's Old Number 7 in the mix. These categories don't count toward the scores that determine The Jack's Ultimate Grand Champion, but do include bragging rights, and a nice-sized check. This year's version of The Jack celebrated not only a zero birthday, but also the expanding profile of American-style barbecue internationally, with a record 27 international teams competing, including the first-ever international team hitting the seven Grand Championship automatic qualifying mark, the team BBQ+ from Belgium. For Scott Fraser, the head cook for the Angus and Oink team from Scotland, barbecue is a full-time business, but competition cooking is not. His team is only competing in its third ever event, and what they may lack in experience, they definitely make up for in enthusiasm.
Scott Fraser: We run a barbecue company and we sell barbecue sauces and rubs all over Europe and all over the world, and we started making barbecue rubs for one of the best competition teams in Europe, which is Miss Piggy's barbecue team. And then we made some of our own rubs and we decided that we should really be using them in anger. So we competed at Arborlair which is an hour from our house, and then we went down to Brew and Que, run by Scott and Linds, and we came sixth of the best 40 teams in Europe, so we thought, "Well, we can cook."
Lucas: So what are you expecting this weekend?
Scott: Absolutely just to have a good time, meet some great people, just enjoy the Jack Daniel's hospitality. It's just been amazing so far.
Lucas: Wayne Lowman from KCBS has been the volunteer coordinating The Jack for the international teams for years, helping arrange their travel to Lynchburg and setting them up with sponsored equipment and tools, since it's a little tough to transport a smoker across various ponds. He also works with them to set their expectations of what KCBS judges are looking for, when it comes to taste, appearance, and tenderness, the three criteria on which samples are judged.
Wayne Lowman: It's all about flavor profiles. Their flavor profiles are a lot different. They use a lot of different spices and sauces that we're normally not used to, but we spent a lot of time with them because they're their ultimate goal is to get to The Jack.
Lucas: Then, there are the American-based teams, from every state in the country. Barbecue in the US has become big business, with the competition circuit serving as one of the many launching pads off of which smoke wielding entrepreneurs can spin up a lucrative lifestyle.
Heath Ryals: I don't even think we've reached the peak of the mountain yet on growth for barbecue. I think it's about, statistics say it's like a 1.9 billion dollar industry right now. And I think you're not going to see that bubble...I think you're going to see it grow to a five billion dollar industry before its over with in the next ten years.
Lucas: That's the voice of Heath Riles, a competition cooker from Olive Branch, Mississippi, 30 miles or so southeast of Memphis, Tennessee. He's been immersed in the barbecue world since he was a teenager, cooking with big-name teams until striking off on his own a few years ago. Heath and his wife Candice are the core of a team that cooks dozens of competitions each year, and has spun off that experience to create their own line of rubs and sauces. From a branding perspective, Heath sees the value of keeping it simple when it comes to creating that product line, his name atop a description of the primary flavors involved. So for Riles, The Jack becomes a destination that serves more than one purpose.
Lucas: Other than just kind of being with the best of the best, what's your favorite part of this weekend?
Heath: Seeing friends that I don't see very often and all that and just hanging out and catching a cold drink and catching up on old times and just shooting the breeze, you know, and me and then meeting also fans that use my products and stuff like that, people I hadn't seen but you know talk to on the internet on a weekly basis and meeting those people and putting a face with the name..
Lucas: After a soggy Thursday and Friday, more than a hundred teams have loaded in and set up in Lynchburg's tiny Wiseman Park. Massive branded trailers sit alongside pickup truck and pop-up tent camps, and after the load-in, the teams gather at the park's entrance for what is the event's true kickoff.
There are a lot of unofficial kickoffs to The Jack, when the teams roll in, when they start to wander around and sign each other's barrelheads, when they interact with each other leading up to right now, the parade starting with the Moore County High School band and then the teams, the teams march out of the hollow, through Lynchburg square and on their way to the visitors center where they will board buses on the way to Barbecue Hill, where they will celebrate everything that is The Jack. One of the people observing the parade and all of the goings-on surrounding The Jack was Bob Ahlgren, whose voice is instantly recognizable to anybody who's ever watched an instructional video from the BBQ Pit Boys. The wildly popular Pit Boys were invited by the distillery to come visit The Jack, as well as one of them to help judge the competition, and while the Pit Boys is methods of cooking are a little more rustic than the competition team's, the overall goal of what both groups do is the celebration of the food form.
Bob Ahlgren: We're really showing the rest of the world American Style barbecue and grilling. The whole idea with backyard grillers is be with your friends, family, kicking back and enjoying life. And yeah, enjoy what you're eating with your family and friends. That's really important.
Lucas: Atop a hill overlooking Lynchburg sits a giant modern wooden structure, a party barn really, where teams and sponsors and other VIPs gather for a celebration with music, fellowship, and food. Fried Chicken on this night to avoid the barbecue overload of tomorrow. There's also the grand tradition of the Burning of the Grievances. Guests are encouraged to write down on a slip of paper the negative things they wish to rid themselves of, and place that slip in a burlap bag. The bag of grievances is emptied into a wrought-iron pig, and with the aid of Master Distiller Jeff Arnett, using a small amount of Old Number 7 to baptize the paper, the symbolic pig is tossed into the barn's giant fireplace, setting the Grievances ablaze and releasing those troubles into the universe.
The party on Barbecue Hill ends pretty early, as parties go, with teams making their way back down to their camps around 9:00 p.m. That's because they've got a long night ahead of them. There's a reason why the phrase "low and slow" has made its way into the conversation when it comes to barbecue. Low temperatures on the smoker, combined with long cook times frequently make for sleepless competition nights. Combine that with the damp and relatively cool, yet not cold, October weather, and pit management will be at a premium if teams want to place high in multiple categories and shoot for that elusive Grand Championship of The Jack.
Saturday morning emerges much as Friday exited, overcast and drizzly but fortunately not with the winds of 2017. Saturday morning is also when Lynchburg undergoes its major transformation. Cars, trucks, vans, motorcycles, and pedestrians start to line the streets of this one-stoplight town, filling the sidewalks tracing the way from the distillery's Visitor Center to Lynchburg Square in the center of town. A small town of hundreds becomes a slow shifting event of thousands even with the less-than-inviting weather. The people wander around among the vendors displaying the latest and greatest barbecue gadgets, sample from festival food purveyors, and take in barbecue theme gained such as butt bowling and the bung toss.
But the focus of the event remains the teams lining Wiseman park, with an added emphasis now on the pavilion situated in the parks center, that's where the competition's judging takes place, and for teams and judges alike, it's a treasured destination. The Jack brings a varied mix of judges into the equation, some longtime experience barbecued tasters, some newly minted judges who took their KCBS certification class the day before. One of those is New York-based spirits writer Tony Sachs, who admits to some trepidation about what he's about to undertake.
Tony Sachs: You know, I'm dreading a little bit of everything, but I'm also looking forward to everything. I mean, it's going to be the best barbecue I've ever had, so that's awesome, but I also have to be a little bit critical, you know, I have to have my critical faculties with me, so my head can't just be exploding every time I take a bite of something.
Lucas: Country music radio personality Kelly Ford also felt the pressure of judging her very first KCBS contest first time.
Kelly Ford: Its my first time, I took the oath, It's serious. I took the class. I was like, oh, this is, I can't be funny Kelly. This is like serious. I'm pledging to the American way of life. The Catholic schoolgirl in me, like the rule follower was like, "When do I say the lettuce is red?" it's a ton of pressure.
Lucas: And then there are the experienced judges, professional barbecue practitioners in their own right, who have very definite opinions about what's being served to them today versus what they would serve to family, friends, and clients. Jim Stancil from Bare Knuckles Barbecue, whose group is brought in each year to provide innovative bites for guests at the Friday night party on Barbecue Hill, thinks there's a noticeable difference between long time cookers and those new to the competition circuit.
Jim Stancil: There are a lot of great guys out here who can cook, there are also a lot of guys who are out here who don't know how to cook barbecue. They simply know how to cook competition barbecue, which was basically taught to them by another competition cook.
Lucas: Florida's Ray Lampe, also known as Dr. BBQ and a longtime fixture at The Jack, agrees with Stancil's assessment.
Ray Lampe: I call a lot of these new cooks "technicians," and they're really good at all that, the texture is the one that's a variable and you got to get it right that day. I think its a texture contest more than it is anything. I think whenever I'm doing it, I know because I've got a spice grinder and I've got hot sauce. I know I can put flavor to just about anything I want, because I know even if it's not coming off the cooker with flavor on it, I can always add the flavor, but I can't change that texture once I've either gone over I haven't gone far enough.
Lucas: The judges gather in the pavilion an hour before the judging begins to shake hands, see old friends, make new ones, sign aprons, and generally prepare themselves for the gastronomic marathon ahead. They will be seated at tables of six, and through the course of the next several hours, taste samples from a random 6 teams in each category and give them scores from one to ten according to KCBS's criteria. But first, they have to take the oath, administered by Barbecue Hall of Famer Ardie Davis, better known as Remus Powers PhB. The former is a pen name he created in college while writing love poems to his eventual wife, the PhB, a fictional degree, he has bestowed upon a precious few: Doctor of Barbecue Philosophy.
Remus Powers, PhB: When I started a sauce contest in my backyard patio, that's now the American Royal Barbecue Sauce contest, on the sociology, I love sociology and philosophy. I know how important ritual is. So I wrote an oath for those judges for my first contest, and that was before the Barbecue Society started, I was on the board in the early days. They said "Well, can we use that oath for the meat contest?" "Why not?" So that's how, yeah, they just wrote it out on some butcher paper the first time.
Lucas: Tradition and ritual is important to any event that happens again and again, much less one that happens over 30 years. It takes people and dedication and a certain amount of sacrifice.
Chip Chapman: The amount of dedication that this has, my wife has a nice that's getting married today, at five o'clock, on barbecue weekend! and I said "Who in the world schedules a wedding on barbecue weekend, unless you're doing it at the barbecue?"
Lucas: This is Chip Chapman, whose day job is as a television weatherman in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Chip has been The Jack's Master of Ceremonies for its entire history. The Jack is a year-round endeavor for him and a select group he calls the Lynchburg Mafia and each year, he marvels at the opportunity to see this dedicated group come together.
Chip: This is a extended family, the barbecue community and the Jack Daniel's community, and this is the one time of year where we all get to get together and celebrate.
Lucas: At 11 a.m. the judges are seated, and the action begins, at least for the teams scrambling to finish their entries and walk them from their encampments to the turn-in location under the pavilion. They will have turn in times every half hour culminating with the dessert category at 2:30 p.m. And those turn in times are crucial, you want your sample to still have some heat as it makes its way in front of the judges. So, walking it from your camp involves split-second timing, as well as spotters in front of you to clear random passers-by out of the way. For the team from Angus and Oink, the Cook's Choice turn-in also involved rolling the dice on a traditional Scottish dish most likely unfamiliar to American palates.
Scott: It's quite a traditional dish called haggis, neeps and tatties, with a whiskey sauce. So, traditionally haggis is a sheep's stomach stuffed with shapes offal, sheeps meat and sheeps lungs. So in the States, it's banned because it has sheep's lung in it, So we had to get one without sheeps lungs for the States so it's American friendly. Neeps is turnip, mashed with butter and milk, and Tatties is mashed potato with a whiskey reduced sauce.
Lucas: So, describe what the flavor profile of that and will be.
Scott: So the haggis is quite peppery and meaty, and then it goes in very sweet with the turnip and butter, and then into the mashed potato with a sharpish and cream whiskey sauce over top of it.
Lucas: The Scots had a fairly straight shot from their camp to the pavilion, the team from Heath Riles' Barbecue on the other hand, had to resort to a few more attention-getting moves to clear the path. In a sense, the competition is a marathon of sprints, the teams having to manage hours of preparation and cooking to hit seven small windows of turn-in times, the judges pacing themselves and their taste buds to be able to objectively evaluate the samples without overextending themselves in the process.
Lucas: Seemed like a fairly, fairly easy path there.
Heath: That was an easy one. It was a lot faster than chicken, chicken got a little nutty.
Lucas: Right out about two minutes, so that wasn't too bad,
Heath: Two minutes is good.
Lucas: Only had to shout "hot grease" a couple times.
Heath: Once, couple times, yeah. You get crazy though, when it's brisket time
Lucas: Yeah, and then the deserts when they're going to be very carefully walking these things through here.
Heath: The crowd gets thicker.
Lucas: Yep. That's for sure.
Lucas: And there can be some moments of both disappointment and joy in the judging process says country music media personality Storme Warren,
Storme Warren: They can butcher chicken so easily, and then when somebody nails it you just go. "Oh, I want to go hug the chef. Thank you so much for getting this right."
Lucas: So many factors go into even placing at The Jack, the weather, the timing of taking the meat off the smoker and preparing the entry box, the experience of the judges that sample your entry, over smoking, undercooking, averting disaster on the turn-in walk, experienced cooks like Heath Riles know when the weekend gets away from them.
Heath: Overall, I didn't like my cook. There were some things I liked about it, but you know nothing just stood out above the rest. It was just good barbecue, and that's what it takes to do well at some contests but when you throw the factor in when you got celebrity judges everything else you never know, right? And so I'm you know, if I finish in the top 50, I'm good, the way I look at it. I'm just here to have a good time.
Lucas: At the same time the Angus and Oink team remained happy to have made it to the finish line and expose some American taste buds to some traditional Scottish fare, but they do have one regret concerning the countless new friends they made
Scott Fraser: We stuck to our guns, we used our own products and we used a hundred-year-old recipe for the pudding dessert, which is great, a good Scottish recipe, and we put in the people we've met, and the parade yesterday, it just blew us all away. If we charged a dollar a photo, we would be going home first class.
Lucas: The competition side over, and the samples that didn't get turned in having been handed out to passersby eager to get their own taste of competition barbecue, the teams start packing up their camps. At 5 p.m. they gather under the judges pavilion, which has been transformed into an awards show stage. The top five teams in each category receive prize packages from event sponsors, a check and congratulations from the Jack Daniel Distillery team of Jeff Arnett and Chris Fletcher. They also take home a commemorative Jack Daniel's barrelhead that shows them to be winners at The Jack, tangible bragging rights that can last a lifetime. Arnett celebrated his 11th barbecue, his 10th as Master Distiller, in 2018 and remains impressed at the quality of the entrance that come to Lynchburg every year.
Jeff Arnett: We have the highest levels of credentials as far as how many contests they had to have won, where they had to have won, also always say you have to not just be good, but you have to be a little bit lucky, because even the criteria we set, they'll be more people who meet that then there will be spaces, so that gets your name in the bag, but it's a lottery draw. So people feel I think very fortunate to get here, but this is truly the best of the best
Lucas: But after two long days of cooking celebrating and commiserating It's the final tally. The crowd is ready for the announcement of the Jack's Grand Champion.
Chip: Ten thousand dollars, and the title of the Grand Champion of the 30th annual Jack Daniel's World Invitational barbecue is going to Butcher BBQ.
Lucas: Hailing from from Chandler, Oklahoma, the Bouska family-run Butcher BBQ team led by head cook David Bouska used a couple different instances of the number 7 to propel themselves to victory. First, they captured Seven Grand championships in 2018 to automatically qualify for The Jack, and this year was their seventh time cooking in the Hollow. Here's Martin Bouska:
Martin Bouska: We won seven Grand Championships to get here.
Lucas: Okay so you automatically qualified? How many years have you been a competition team?
Martin: This is our 11th year and we've been here six times.
Lucas: Okay, when during this process to do you feel like we might have a chance at it?
Martin: We didn't yeah, we really didn't, we figured Darren and Smokey D's was going to win it, because he had three calls, and we only got two.
Lucas: What did you feel strong about going into the day and after the turn-ins?
Martin: It was up to the judges then. We just did what we normally do.
Lucas: How are you going to celebrate this?
Martin: We've got a long drive home.
Lucas: But it's a drive the Bouska family will happily make, as well as the return trip next year to defend that Grand Championship. As for the other teams as well as the sponsors, organizers, and Lynchburg residents that excitedly await the next time they gather, the clock starts now. They will all plan and plot, experiment and refine, succeed and fall short, all in the attempt to make it back to The Jack, where they will turn fire into smoke, meat into barbecue, and experience into memories.
Special thanks to Randall Bowman and Carolyn Wells of the KCBS for their help with this episode, as well as to Debbie Christian and the scores of volunteers that make The Jack an amazing event every single year. Around the Barrel is the official podcast of the Jack Daniel Distillery. Follow the podcast on the web at JackDaniels.com/podcast, if you like what you hear, please subscribe rate and review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you gather your on-demand audio. Always remember with great podcast and great whiskey, please enjoy responsibly. Join us next time for more conversations Around the Barrel. Your friends at Jack Daniel's remind you to drink responsibly. Jack Daniel's and Old Number 7 are registered trademarks, copyright 2019, Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume, 80 proof, distilled and bottled by Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. Around the Barrel is intended for listeners 21 years of age and older.
