Interview With the Champs – Scott Adams, Sauced! BBQ

by Brian Walrath, MABA Board Member and Pitmaster for Brown Liquor BBQ

The Sauced! BBQ team is a family team that’s been competing since 2009 and steadily have been getting better and better every year.  With a dozen grand championships to this name, pitmaster Scott Adams and his crew are starting to become one of the elite teams in not only the Mid-Atlantic, finishing fourth overall in 2016, but the entire country with a ninth place finish in all of KCBS!  Scott was gracious enough to answer some questions about his team and offer up some nuggets of wisdom that has helped him along the way.

Question:
For folks who may not be familiar with Sauced! BBQ Team, tell us a little about your team, set up, equipment.

Scott Adams, Sauced! BBQ:
Sauced! BBQ consists of myself, my wife Joline, and my 2 kids, Zoe and Zane. We started out on an offset stick burner that I heavily modified before adding a Backwoods Party I bought on the cheap from another team.  We replaced the stick burner with a Stumps Elite 4 in 2013 and then went all Backwoods adding a G2 Competitor to go along with a Party. We’ve been using that setup since 2015.

Q:
You’re already off to a great start in 2017, but let’s talk about 2016.  You cooked nearly 40 contest last year!  You had a great run including 5 GCs, 8 RGCs, impressive showings in the Sam’s Club National BBQ Series, and in Kansas City in the Open and Invitational.  Tell us about last year.

SA, S!BBQ:
Last year was definitely a banner year for Sauced! BBQ.  We started out well at the beginning of the year and just kept adding events, cooking anywhere and everywhere we could.  We cooked in 13 states, taking home a GC in 5 of them and logging just under 20k miles travelling the BBQ circuit.  We hit many new states for us including Indiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Kansas and California.  Several bucket list items were checked off including the Sam’s Final in Arkansas, receiving an invite to the King of the Smoker in California and finishing in the top 25 of all 5 KCBS standings including 9^th Overall.  The one bucket list item we didn’t get to check off was The Jack.  It felt good that we had 5 bungs in 4 different states but still didn’t get the draw.  We are hoping the luck is with us in 2017 and we can get that magical invite!

Q:
You came out of the shoot strong this year already with a GC your first time out in Lakeland, FL and followed that up with an RGC in Young Harris, GA.  To what can you attribute your early season success?

SA, S!BBQ:
The biggest part of our success is we didn’t really have much time off so we never had a chance to get rusty.  We cooked in to December last year and then we started our 2017 at the Sonny’s Invitational in mid-January so we really only had a month off.  That allowed us to keep that routine and flow we’ve built over the last few years with a cooking process that is pretty much second nature to us at this point.

Q:
What are your goals for the 2017 campaign?

SA, S!BBQ:
We hope to continue our success in to 2017. Our main goal is to get that Jack invite and hopefully be in the mix for team of the year when its all said and done.  We’ve been 9^th and 10^th the last 2 years so I am hoping we can close in on the top this time around.  Also, it would be nice to take home the Old North State Series (NC events) title.  We’ve been 2^nd two of the last three years so we’ll see if we can get over the hump this year.

Q:
Let’s go back a few years…tell us how you got into competition barbecue and what drives your passion to compete so much. 

SA, S!BBQ:
We cooked BBQ at home for a year or so and started to get the ‘you should do a competition’ comments from the friends we invited over to eat regularly.  We started competing in 2009 at an event in Lincolnton, NC.  By the end of the comp we had won People’s Choice and had a 6^th place Chicken call. That was all she wrote.  We did 5 comps that first year and gradually increased it year by year as we got better and ended up doing 40 in 2016.  The main driver is the fun and camaraderie of the competition BBQ.  Cooking competition’s week in and week out is hard work so if it wasn’t for the great people we meet and see week to week I don’t think we would do as many as we do.  It also helps to have an awesome understanding wife who also enjoys BBQ and that lets us turn it in to a family event. The kids love going to BBQ and seeing new places and old faces.

Q: What makes Sauced! BBQ Team different or unique?

SA, S!BBQ:
I think we are different/unique in that we are able to travel basically all over the country and have success at BBQ.  We have recipes that travel well and we aren’t afraid to take them on the road to faraway places.  We cooked against the best at competitions all over the country and were able to stand toe to toe with them and have success.  We are very proud of that. Also, we are unique in the ‘Cousin Eddie’ beat up RV we roll up to a contest in.  We certainly don’t look the part of a competition BBQ team.  Lol

Q:
You’re in the southernmost state for MABA down in North Carolina…do you get up to the heart of MABA-land much or have plans to this year?

SA, S!BBQ:
We’ll do the most events we’ve ever done in MABA country this year.  We’ll be in West Virgina, Virginia a few times as well as Delaware and possibly Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Q:
Lexington style or Eastern NC style?  Duke or Carolina?  Beaches or mountains?

SA, S!BBQ:
Ha,  let me see.  Lexington style. I need some ketchup in my bbq sauce. Neither. I am a Florida State grad so if both duke and unc can lose every game I’m all for it.  Beaches. I prefer the heat over the cold anytime.  We really hit our BBQ stride in the August, the dog days of summer!

Q:
I like to ask in this segment, what tip(s) do you have for competition teams to go from good to great and get that GC call?

SA, S!BBQ:
Simplicity and repetition.  Overly complicated processes are very hard to replicate week in and week out and especially so at a BBQ contest where you are sleep deprived and distracted.  Repetition is key. Once you find a process, flavor combo or method that works you can take out as many by doing the same things the same way every single time you do them.  I am the worst person to talk to when it comes to those convo’s at BBQ events about ‘have you seen this or tried that?”  I don’t change anything so I am not up on all the new rubs, sauces and injections. I found stuff that works for me and I use it and do it the same way every single week.

Q:
Any parting shots, things we missed or anything to promote?

SA, S!BBQ:
I want to give a shout out to the Q Pine Nation, a group of our buddies who compete and travel with us.  They are quite a diverse group who can do about anything you need and are certainly some of the most fun people and best cooks you’ll ever meet.  Not to mention the mad skills they possess from rv repairs to property management to cable making to cigar smoking!