The Smokis Porkis Story

Our first BBQ tournament is Oct 3rd and the team had been struggling for weeks to come up with a name for ourselves. We must have come up with 100's of names and whenever we settled on one, a quick google search would point out that someone else had already used it. (My favorite was 'Rub Me Tender'...but that is already taken by another local team.)

Anyway, it might seem weird, but I was trying to think of a logo before we even had a name. Somehow my mind landed on the Virginia Flag, which was my twitter avatar at the time and I started thinking about how we could make it our own. I did a little research and this is what I found.

The picture on the seal of Virginia's deep blue flag is portraying the state motto - Sic Semper Tyrannis - or, Thus Ever to Tyrants, in plain English. This is what always happens to unjust rulers. At the time of it's flag design in 1776, Virginia and other colonies were fighting for independence from England, who to them were tyrants. The woman, virtue, represents Virginia. The man holds a whip and chain, indicating he is a tyrant. They have fought a battle, and the tyrant lies on the ground defeated, his fallen crown nearby.

At dinner (Brisket) over at my teammate Cam's house, we brainstormed how this could be altered to represent BBQ and we settled quickly on replacing the Tyrant with a pig and the crown with a trophy.

We had a logo concept but still NO NAME!!! We started thinking about the Latin phrase at the bottom and spent a good hour online with an English to Latin translator, spitting out various phrases that just didn't sound right. Things started to click when we started inventing Latin words. SMOKIS PORKIS was born!

A friend at work did me a solid and turned our thoughts into reality.

We are incredibly proud of it and hope that our turn-ins are half as good!!

Parctice Session Temp Graph

Here is a chart displaying the various temp's I recorded during my practice session on Sunday. If you read my other post on this, you know that my brisket turned out a little over cooked and the pork was a little undercooked.
These temps are from the door thermometer and my thermometer inside the temp told me that the brisket cooked at about 25 degrees hotter than what the door read. The pork was just about dead on to the door reading.

It is quite obvious to me what the problems are, but would love any analysis:

1) Smoker Temp - Cook temp was not 'in control'. More like it controlled me. I started off using oak logs for heat and was able to get the temp up, but it dropped off a cliff if I didn't tend to it every 20 minutes. At hour 7, I switched over to lump charcoal and you can see what happened. The temp was more stable but never got high enough.

Action: For the competition in Oct, I think I will buy some Hickory logs and just use them in the smoker. The extra man power there should provide enough attention to the firebox that we can keep the temp in the right zone. Long-term, I need recommendations for how to manage temp more efficiently.

2) Brisket Temp - You can see from the yellow triangles that I went a long time without checking my internal temp of the brisket. I got distracted with yard work and the smoker temp and just plain forgot about it. I wanted to pull it at 190.

Action: Pay more attention.

3) Pork Temp - Even though it cooked for 14 hours, it never got above 175. The meat was OK, but not falling apart in many places.

Action: Rotate around the placement of the meats within the cooker and, for heavens sake, keep the overall temp up in the darn thing.

If you have any insight on:
1) cooking in a Bandera and how to control the heat
2) how to rotate meats once foiled....I am concerned that I will put a hole in the foil and my juices will drain out
3) other data that I should be recording when cooking
3) any tips at all
please do share. Thanks for reading and I appreciate the help!