Our 2022 Competition BBQ Season: Where It All Started

Long before Bourbon & Blues BBQ became a competition team, we were BBQ judges. We started judging in 2010 and spent years on the other side of the turn-in table before stepping away from BBQ during the pandemic. As things began opening back up, Colleen thought a BBQ class would make the perfect getaway and surprised JP with an opportunity to learn from legendary pitmaster Johnny Trigg.

The class took us to Louisiana and, somewhere on the drive home, the conversation changed from judging BBQ to cooking it ourselves. We decided to give competition BBQ a try. The team name was actually the easy part. Colleen had already created Bourbon & Blues BBQ for a graduate school project, so once we decided to compete, we turned it into something real. We worked on a logo, signed up for our first contest in West Virginia, and started figuring things out as we went. JP even surprised Colleen with a team banner before the first cook. We may have been brand new, but at least the setup looked official.

Bourbon & Blues BBQ 2022 Competition Schedule

We started our competition journey in the Backyard division, where most contests featured Chicken and Ribs and some added Pork or Brisket. We also jumped into two Masters contests during our first season—partly because there wasn’t always a Backyard event available and partly because we wanted to see how our food compared at the next level. Rocky Mount also had some pretty cool hand-blown glass flame trophies, which gave us one more reason to see what we could do.

We quickly learned that competition BBQ had a steep learning curve. Looking for stronger competition, we began traveling to Alabama, where some of the best Backyard teams in the country pushed us to improve. There were plenty of tough weekends, but every contest gave us something new to work on when we got home.

This schedule reflects Bourbon & Blues BBQ’s competition stops during our first season of cooking in 2022.

Our 2022 Competition Season

We walked into our first competition in Ripley, West Virginia, with a new banner, a new team, and plenty to learn. Somehow, we walked away with a 9th Place Pork call in our very first contest. We spent most of the ride home talking about everything we thought we had done wrong—and before long, we were looking for another contest to enter.

The next several months were humbling. We traveled, experimented, changed processes, and tried to figure out why food that seemed great to us wasn’t always scoring the way we expected. We deliberately sought out tougher Backyard fields, including trips to Alabama, because we knew cooking against strong teams would force us to get better.

Then things started to click. At the Maryland State BBQ Bash in Bel Air, we earned 3rd Overall with 2nd Place Ribs and 5th Place Chicken. It felt like the first real confirmation that all of those miles, mistakes, and adjustments were beginning to pay off.

From there, we finished the season on a completely different trajectory. We followed Bel Air with Top 10 overall finishes on both days of the Shelby BBQ Extravaganza, then earned 3rd Overall at the Atlanta BBQ Store Classic with a perfect 180 and 1st Place Chicken. We closed the season in Demopolis, Alabama with 1st Place Ribs and 4th Overall.

Eight months after arriving at our first contest just hoping to figure out what we were doing, we ended 2022 believing we might actually be able to compete—and we couldn’t wait to see what 2023 would bring.

2022 Season Highlights

• First Competition — Downtown BBQ Throwdown — earned our first career Top 10 call with 9th Place Pork
• 6th Place Pork — Back to School Bash — one of our first Top 10 calls while testing ourselves against strong Alabama Backyard teams
• 3rd Overall — Maryland State BBQ Bash — the breakthrough weekend, highlighted by 2nd Place Ribs and 5th Chicken
• 9th Overall — Shelby BBQ Extravaganza, Day 1 — with 8th Chicken and 9th Ribs
• 6th Overall — Shelby BBQ Extravaganza, Day 2 — with 5th Chicken and 4th Ribs
• 3rd Overall — Atlanta BBQ Store Classic — highlighted by a perfect 180 and 1st Place Chicken, plus 7th Ribs in a 57-team field
• 4th Overall — Christmas on the River State Bar B Q Championship — closed our first season with 1st Place Ribs and 10th Chicken

From BBQ Judges to Competition Cooks

We never set out with a long-term plan to build a competition BBQ team. We had spent years judging BBQ, took a class because it sounded like a fun post-pandemic getaway, and decided somewhere on the drive home that maybe we should try cooking a contest ourselves.

By the end of 2022, that one decision had taken us from West Virginia to Alabama and plenty of places in between. We struggled more weekends than we succeeded, but every tough score gave us something to work on, and every call made us want to come back and try again.

The final stretch of the season showed us how much progress we had made. More importantly, it convinced us that we wanted to keep going. We entered 2023 with more experience, a lot more confidence, and absolutely no idea just how special the next season would become.

Follow Us on the BBQ Trail

Explore more of our competition seasons, results, resources, and life on the road through On the BBQ Trail.