Apple Butter BBQ Sauce Comes Home With Big Award

House of Q Wins Three Awards at the Annual Awards of Excellence at the National Barbecue Association’s Conference

House of Q is known for being awarded as BBQ Pitmasters, that is for cooking great BBQ such as winning best ribs at the World Food Championships. But House of Q also wins awards as some of the world’s best BBQ sauces and spices. This is remarkable as a Canadian product company that gets awards in the USA.

The National Barbecue Association based in Kansas City, Missouri, holds the Awards of Excellence contest in conjunction with their annual conference.  The contest allows companies to enter in many different categories their products and then be blindly judged for top spots.

On February 16, 2023 in Orlando, Florida, House of Q won three awards!  And this gets all of us at House of Q really excited!

BBQ Sauce & Spice Awards

For the third year in a row, Five Star BBQ Sauce, released to Canadian retailers only in 2020, received it’s third award in three years. The sauce is placed in the highly competitive category that always has the most number of entries, ‘Tomato Mild BBQ Sauce’, was awarded Fourth Place! This is a move upward one spot from the awards in Dallas, Texas in 2022. Five Star BBQ Sauce is described as tangy, sweet and very well balanced. Fans quickly took to this sauce which BBQ Brian had been developing for many years.

The Competition Rib Rub, which is also new to Canadian retail stores since being release in 2021, again places very well at the competition. This BBQ rub was awarded Fifth Place this year in the ‘Pork Rub Category’. Although this rub is new to retail stores and consumers it has been used as a ‘top-secret’ rub at competitions for over ten years at House of Q. The rub has been used to win dozens of ribs championships including best ribs, first-place ribs, at the 2014 World Food Championship’s in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The top prize for House of Q and most notable is the Second Place award for the flagship Apple Butter BBQ Sauce. This sauce is the sole reason the company started in 2007 a mere sixteen years ago in 2007. Apple Butter BBQ Sauce won it’s first award in the fall of 2007 at the BBQ on the Bow contest in Calgary, Alberta where it won first place BBQ sauce. Since then, it has won awards at the National Barbecue Festival in Douglas, Georgia, the BBQ on the Bow in Calgary, Alberta and at the National BBQ Association based in Kansas City, Missouri.

BBQ Brian shows off his recently awarded BBQ sauces and spices along with a big smile.  He says “It is real easy to wear a big smile when you get recognition from industry people who are from another area of the world and recognize the flavours you have crafted. I am in awe that after 16 years Apple Butter BBQ Sauce still gets awards – I know it’s super-delicious and the judges still agree with me!”

House of Q is based in Vernon, BC and is a based small, home-based business. They have a sixteen-year history as crafting some of the world’s best BBQ sauces and spices. BBQ Brian and his cook team are also very decorated competition BBQ ‘pitmasters’ including dozens of awards and even world championships.  BBQ Brian has been seen for many years on Global TV BC Morning News, on the Food Network Canada’s Fire Masters show and hosting the “Grills” campaign for the Jeff O’Neil Show on CFOX radio in Vancouver.

Both Competition Rib Rub and Five Star BBQ Sauce are planned to be available in United States and additional export markets later in 2023.

To see all of the National BBQ Associations Awards of Excellence recipients for 2023, please visit: https://www.nbbqa.org/blog/2023-awards-of-excellence-top-5-announced