It started with a few mates and a plate of ribs
The Rib Appreciation Society started in 2013 with a handful of mates and one rule: go and eat the ribs, then say honestly whether they were any good.
That was the whole thing. We’d pick a pub or a steakhouse somewhere around Geelong, order the ribs, and write up what turned up. No angle, no sponsorship. Just whether the meat came off the bone properly and whether it was worth the money.
Then I started cooking them myself
Low ’n slow barbecue took off in Australia, and COVID handed a lot of us more time in the backyard than we’d ever had. That’s when I started cooking it myself instead of going out for it.
It didn’t take long to work out something a bit uncomfortable: the ribs coming off my own smoker were better than most of what I’d been paying for. That was the moment this stopped being a review club and turned into an obsession.
Hundreds of cooks, and most of the gear
Since then I’ve cooked hundreds of pieces of barbecue at home, and run just about everything you can run it on: offset smokers, pellet smokers, Weber grills, PK grills, Bradley smokers, Green Mountain Grills, Big Green Egg, Traeger, and plenty of cooks straight over an open fire.
Different gear, same questions every time. What temperature. How long. When to wrap it. When to pull it off.
Out of the backyard
It hasn’t stayed in the backyard. I’ve cooked live demonstrations at Meatstock and in Weber stores. At Meatstock Sydney I hosted Meet The Pitmasters on the main stage, interviewing pitmasters and chefs in front of a live audience.
I also co-hosted The BBQ and Brews Show with Mark, 242 videos and more than 70 conversations with people across the Australian barbecue community, from Meatstock organisers to competition pitmasters to the bloke smoking brisket down the road in Geelong. It’s still up on YouTube and Spotify. Barbecue has also put me on the radio here in Geelong, on K-Rock’s breakfast show with Tom & Loggy and The Catch Up with Daryl and Roxie on Bay 93.9, and into the Geelong Advertiser, the Surf Coast Times and the Geelong Independent. Which still feels odd for something that began as a few blokes arguing about ribs.
Two names, one story
These days you’ll find me as That Smoke n Grill Guy. The name came out of a two-year partnership with Samba Fire & BBQ, and it stuck, because by then I was cooking a good deal more than ribs.
But the Rib Appreciation Society is where it started, and I’m the founding member who’s still here and still cooking. The two aren’t separate things. One exists because of the other.
What this site is
This is where it all comes together. Every recipe here is one I’ve actually cooked, written up with the temperatures, the times and the results as they happened, including the cooks that didn’t go to plan.
The reviews stay up too. More than a decade of eating ribs around Geelong, the Bellarine, Melbourne and further afield is worth keeping.
If it’s on here, it came off my smoker.
You’ll find the cooks as they happen on Instagram and TikTok.
Reyan