About BBQ Explorer

BBQ Explorer publishes practical barbecue guides and reference tools. This methodology explains what the source links and dates on each kind of page do—and do not—establish.

Current publication status

BBQ Explorer is the publication brand and site name. It is edited and published by Sam French. For corrections or other inquiries, email contact@mybbqexplorer.com. No response-time promise is made.

Source and review methodology

City guides

A city guide is a curated, source-linked listing arranged for navigation. Its order is not a comparative taste or value ranking. Candidate-discovery inputs help identify smokehouses to research, but they do not substantiate guide prose. Some candidates are located with OpenStreetMap data (© OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License) and with Overture Maps place data (Place data © Overture Maps Foundation, CDLA-Permissive-2.0); both supply restaurant identity only — a name, a website address and a point — and neither is ever the source of any published fact. A source enters a city guide’s inventory only when a fact marker in the published guide resolves to one fact in that city’s fact sheet and that fact’s exact URL and retrieval timestamp resolve to one hashed source-ledger record.

Retrieval dates are historical capture dates. They are not live link checks, freshness promises, or independent claim-level verification dates; a publisher can change a page after capture. Visit-planning decision tables use separately reviewed evidence in each known cell. Those cell sources stay distinct from the inventory for the guide prose.

Joint profiles

Published profile text carries fact markers that must resolve inside the named joint’s scoped fact records. The build then binds each cited fact to its exact source URL, retrieval timestamp, and hashed ledger record before producing the public source list. Post-publication review repeats those checks; a correction updates the affected prose or source record, regenerates the inventory, and passes the same build gates before release.

Meat Guide

The Meat Guide records one August 2026 capture date and content hash for each cited page. Claim-bearing guide text was manually reviewed against those captures. Redirects retain the requested URL and record the resolved article separately. The dates describe that audit, not a new probe or a guarantee that the source remains unchanged.

Gear and reference guides

Gear specifications trace to named manufacturer or product pages and their recorded retrieval dates. Reference pages name the agencies, manufacturers, or publishers behind their inputs. Calculators expose their formulas and keep user-entered prices or rates separate from cited defaults; derived results are arithmetic, not fresh market quotes.

The Brisket Index

The index collector records source URLs, retrieval timestamps, source status, and dated snapshots for a fixed basket. Only snapshots that pass the filename, Monday UTC cadence, and basket-coverage contract enter the weekly series. Published methodology and source coverage identify the comparison rules and dates; missing values are not smoothed, interpolated, or carried forward. Updates preserve prior snapshots and run the same contract checks. Corrections trace the affected output back to its snapshot and source, regenerate dependent artifacts, and publish the revised dated evidence trail.

Affiliate disclosure

Gear guides may contain affiliate links in clearly marked buy-link sections. A page that includes them carries its disclosure directly beside the links.