On The Road With RL Reeves Jr: Winners 2018 Brady Texas World Championship Barbecue Goat Cook Off

“Sunday turn-in sucks. I don’t know what the hell they’re thinking”

Angry words were spat out by cooking teams at the big World Championship Barbecue Goat Cook Off held last weekend in Brady, Texas.

In its 45th year the organizers made major changes to the long-running shootout, and several of the teams were mad as hell.

For the first 44 years of the event the barbecue teams smoked goats all night long on Friday and turned in the meat on Saturday to be judged.

2018 marks the first year that Sunday was the judging day, and many of the teams vowed to never return.

Change comes slow in the Texas hill country.

I’ve lost count of how many World Championship Barbecue Goat Cook Offs I’ve attended as either civilian or judge.

It used to be a simple matter to hop on my old Kawasaki, and ride a couple hours through the brushy Texas hill country from my Austin home to Brady, Texas to hit the old goat party.

Nowadays, it’s nigh on to a 600 mile journey but I still plot every Labor Day weekend off work so I can trek to McCulloch County to what is the finest smoked meat party in the great state of Texas.

After a long reconnoiter around the grounds I vectored in on the Waco Boys Cooking Team’s camp where I spent the rest of the afternoon drinking ice cold Keystone beers, and eating goat, brisket, pork ribs, deer meat, fiery hot sauce and a variety of grilled jalapeno chiles stuffed with everything under the Texas sun.

Here’s what I saw:

Winners 2018 Brady Texas World Championship Barbecue Goat Cook Off

1) Los Quatros Locos, Brady
2) Las Familias, Bryan
3) Wallace Creek Goat Rustlers, San Saba
4) Dodco, Brady
5) Longhorn Crossing BBQ, Oak Point
6) Dodco, Brady (not a misprint)
7) Goat Head and Get U Sum, Brady
8) Cook-N-Co, Goldthwaite
9) Cook and Cook, Brady
10) Goat Willies, Brownwood

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