Graham Sherman is probably best known to his fellow Calgarians as the co-founder of Tool Shed Brewing, but for the past two decades, he’s also been a top contender in the world of competitive BBQ.

Earlier this month, Sherman and his team at The Notorious P.I.G. took home a top accolade at the Jack Daniels World Championship Invitational, tying with fellow Canadians 333 BBQ for the Cooking From the Homeland prize.

Although the final was decided by a coin toss, with The Notorious P.I.G. going home with the second place barrel head award, Sherman said he couldn’t have been more elated.

“It’s the culmination of literally 20 years of practice. So, then to go down as Canadians, we almost are somewhat almost apologetic. This is kind of like Rudy man, we were walk ons, we got out of the field, but we might not touch the football,” Sherman said.

“To get on the field, and execute our game plan like we did—and we and to get a freaking tie for first place down to four decimal places in our dish was as just too much for words. I can’t even freaking I can’t even comprehend it. Still, I wake up in the morning and go, ‘OK, yeah, It was real. It was real.'”

The Jack Daniels invitational is one of the most exclusive BBQ competitions in the world, requiring both excellence in craft, wins at other competitions, and a healthy serving of luck to be considered.

The 2024 competition featured just three Canadian teams, alongside teams from all 50 U.S. states, and countries from as far away as Australia and New Zealand, to European nations like Estonia, Lithuania, and Sweden.

Luck to be chosen, but skill gave them the win

Sherman said that The Notorious P.I.G. was chosen as a result of their grand champion status in Canada, their competition in the World Food Championships, and a championship win this year in Didsbury on the competition circuit.

“Each state gets their team, and then for all other countries around the world, like most of them, if they even get to win an event that could qualify them, there might just be one team from from each country that represents the country,” he said.

“The way it works is you win your grand championship. Jack Daniels gives you a bung from a Jack Daniels barrel, they put your team name on it, and they put it in a draw. At the end of the year, when they say, ‘OK, here’s who’s coming to the World Championships,’ they draw the three bungs out of that bag for who gets to come to the to the show.”

He said that in preparation for the draw, the team drank Jack Daniels, and even made a Jack Daniels cutting board that they rubbed for good luck.

That luck put them in competition with some of the biggest names in BBQ. Champions of the slow cooked ribs, melt in your mouth brisket, the kind of BBQ that puts a champion winner in front of international audiences on Netflix and on The Food Network.

The same people that just two years earlier in 2022, he was being judged by at the World Food Championships.

“I made it to the final table, and the judges were like Chris Lilly, Tuffy Stone, Harry Soo, Lee Ann Whippin and Famous Dave. These are masters and Hall of Fame World Champions, and you stand there before them, and they’re asking you questions about your barbecue, and you just, you get stuck in this moment of is this even real life?” Sherman said.

“Like I’m speaking to my heroes, they’re eating my barbecue and asking me questions about it. It’s truly unbelievable, and then to come away from these events, look at the results, and holy crap, I beat this person.”

Award winning flavours from the land and the sea

Sherman’s award winning creation in Lynchburg, Tennessee was a wild surf-and-turf dish that combined a Jack Daniels’ soaked pork belly with salted crackling, combined with lobster bisque with palm puree potatoes and lobster tail on top, and a prime rib steak with a chimichurri green sauce.

“It was an unbelievable dish,” he said.

The win came as a result of being creative but also responsive to the tastes and interests of judges in the Jack Daniels competition, he said.

“For competition, what you have to do is get to know the judges, and know what part of the country where the judges from, and what they are looking for. So when we went to Texas, those judges were looking for something different than what they are in in in Canada. There’s flavor profiles that you’re having to try to get to know so that you do better with hitting that spot on the dartboard,” Sherman said.

“That’s why you see a lot of those big names on there, because they’ve been doing it for so long and so repetitively that they get to know what hits, and what strikes. Boy this last weekend, when you saw the people that were winning, it was four or five teams that just kind of won everything. It was wild to see the ones that know what they’re doing. They win it all.”

The winners, he said, capture the concept of what makes regional BBQ great, and then elevate the best parts.

“Obviously, for brisket, I love Texas brisket, and for ribs you can’t convince me there’s anything on earth better than Memphis dry ribs.”

Back in Calgary earlier this The Notorious P.I.G. took home the top wins for both categories of ribs at the Cowboys BBQ Cook Off held during the Cowboys Music Festival, and also swept the 2024 Barley and Smoke competition for both BBQ and beers.

The next stop for Sherman and the team will be at the upcoming American Royal The World Series of Barbecue, to be held in Kansas City at the end of October.

That competition, according to organizers, will draw over 500 teams and over 70,000 visitors from Oct. 31 through Nov. 3.

Owing to how difficult it will be for Calgarians to make it to that competition, he would be hosting a BBQ event at Tool Shed later in Nov. where he and his team would be re-creating all of their dishes, Sherman said.

“It doesn’t even matter how we do in Kansas City. We’re going to have a big event at the brewery, similar to what we did when we won that gold medal in 2022 in Texas, and we’re going make all the dishes for people to come to Tool Shed and try them,” he said.