Pitmasters From Around The Country Showcase Their Award-Winning BBQ
by Mark Smiley and Richard Colaizzi
The Second Annual Denver BBQ Festival was held over Father’s Day weekend at Broncos Stadium at Mile High. Pitmasters from around the country were on hand to smoke meat and serve their barbecue to thousands of attendees in search of good barbecue. “The energy that’s going on at this event is twice as good as it was last year,” said John David Wheeler, Pitmaster for Memphis Barbecue Co. “Denver is starving for great barbecue. They’re wanting it. Hopefully we can bring it to them.”
The event featured not only award-winning barbecue but also live music throughout the three-day fest. And, Tito’s Vodka sponsored the VIP Lounge and a dog lounge. The VIP experience cost $85 and also allowed for unlimited barbecue tastings for a two-and-a-half-hour period.
Pitmasters from six states lined up and cooked meat from the time they arrived until the time they pulled out. The three-day festival featured a total of over 19,000 pounds of meat and almost 3,000 pounds of sides. “You have to cook volume here,” said Craig Verhage, The BBQ Ninja. “You have to feed the people, feed the masses. If anything here, each team is helping each other. If somebody needs something we get it to them. We all have the same goal here and that is to cook as much as we possibly can and sell as much as we possibly can and make everybody that comes through the gate happy.”
This fraternity of pitmasters is evident with how much respect they have for each other and how much they like each other. “We do these events all over the world, said Mike Johnson, owner of Sugarfire Smokehouse in St. Louis, MO. “I’m in South America and Europe all the time. I’m in Australia a few times a year for events. I tell everyone this is one of my favorite events. It’s classy and the food is great. It has the most talent of any event I have ever done. I’m not bragging about myself. These are all my heroes. Salt Lick and The Shed, Memphis Barbecue Co. and Peg Leg are awesome. Ubon’s. They’re all really good friends of ours. They have great food.”
It’s not just the love of great food that they share. They also have friendships that have hatched as a direct result of doing the festivals together for so many years. “I’ve been overseas with all these guys,” said Johnson. “We spend tons of time. We’ve been together for birthdays and funerals. We do a lot of stuff together.”
“He’s a genius (Mike Johnson),” said Wheeler. “What a talent. If you’re out here on this block right now, you can do it and the people of Denver don’t know what a treat it is to have these guys. I wish we could do this everywhere and let people share our passion with barbecue.”
This passion for barbecue and the desire to give back to the community is what sparked Wheeler to start Operation BBQ Relief. “Operation BBQ Relief started about eight years ago when a group of guys just like us got together after a tornado in Joplin, Missouri, destroyed the whole town,” said Wheeler. “They wanted to do something so everybody who had meat in their freezers or refrigerators took their meat out and started cooking. 117,000 meals later and three and a half weeks, they were done.”
That was the birth of Operation BBQ Relief and since then, they are 45,000 meals away from serving three million meals. “We do what we can to help people out and when people walk up, they walk up like a deer in the headlights asking why we are doing this,” said Wheeler. “My answer is I would hope you would do the same for me.” Wheeler and a team of 300-500 volunteers set up five smokers that can hold 1,000 pounds of meat each. That allows them to feed between 25,000 and 50,000 people. “Being around people who give their time to volunteer to help other people are the kind of guys I want to hang out with,” said Wheeler.
Wheeler is a full-time home builder and full-time pitmaster and jokes: “It wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done.” As far as Memphis Barbecue Co., they served their ribs and baked beans at the festival and the fast-moving line always had guests waiting for some of the best ribs in the country.
Don’t Forget The Sauce: A volunteer puts the final layer of barbecue sauce on the ribs from Memphis Barbecue Co. Their ribs are regarded as some of the best in the country.
Wheeler’s friend Mike Emerson, Pitmaster for Pappy’s Smokehouse in St. Louis, also served ribs and some guests commented that it was the best they have ever had. What started as Emerson, his business partner John Matthews, and three employees, has now grown into a 50-plus person operation based in St. Louis. “We actually sat in a bar one day and drew Pappy’s on a bar napkin and 11 years later, here we are,” said Emerson.
Emerson, who is a seventh generation Missourian grew up loving the outdoors and cooking outdoors. It has always been a part of his life. Now, Pappy’s runs their smokers 24 hours per day and 7 days per week. “We run six smokers that will do about 500 pounds on each smoker,” said Emerson. “We can go as high as five to six thousand pounds per day. Most days we’ll do about three to four thousand pounds.” It is estimated that his son cooks 400 slabs of ribs per day to total one million since opening.
“We hit St. Louis at a good time, said Emerson. “We’re the only city that’s got a rib named after it. We do know a little bit about barbecue. I always tell everybody first the neighborhood embraced us and then the city embraced us and then America embraced us. Now we actually have people from all over the world that make trips to Pappy’s so we’ve been very fortunate. It’s been a great ride.”
That ride has brought them to Denver the last two years with a nice partnership with the City of Denver and the Denver Broncos. “To make one of these really successful, you’ve got to have the city buy in with what the people here are trying to do,” said Verhage. “Between the city and the Broncos and what we are trying to accomplish here, everybody’s on the same page, you don’t have somebody that is causing any friction to not make this a huge successful event.” “I moved West of here (Maui) and this is one of the few places I’ll come back to the mainland to come visit,” said Emerson. “You guys are wonderful.”
For more information about Denver BBQ Fest, visit www.denverbbqfest.com. Operation BBQ Relief is located at www.operationbbqrelief.org; Pappy’s Smokehouse at www.pappyssmokehouse.com; Sugarfire Smokehouse at www.sugarfiresmokehouse.com; Memphis Barbecue Co. at www.memphisbbqco.com; and follow The BBQ Ninja on Twitter @The_BBQ_Ninja. If you crave barbecue from one of the vendors from the Festival, Sugarfire has a location in Westminster, and GQue BBQ has locations in Lone Tree and Westminster. For the rest, visit them online to purchase sauces and rubs or wait until next year for the Third Annual Denver BBQ Festival.