I'm spending this week in Oakland and Sonoma County. Nope, not getting dating advice from Tom Cable. I'm attending Kingsford University, learning how to grill from the master pitmaster, Chris Lilly. (Posts with tips and tricks to follow all week.)

Chris runs the world famous Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q restaurants in Decatur, AL, has 10 World BBQ Championships to his name, and has taken six world titles at "Memphis in May," the granddaddy of barbecue competitions. Let's just say he knows his way around a flame.

Since you can't win championships... or feed hungry tailgaters... without heat - and starting a fire, and maintaining proper cooking temps, seems to be the biggest problem for most guys - I asked Chris for some tips on getting the fire going the right way.

He gave me three sure fire ways to get the perfect heat, for the perfect meat, every time. You can get them, and a few other top tips, in the video below.

And if you haven't tried any of Lilly's recipes I've posted over the last couple of years, you're missing out. Type "Kingsford" in the search box to get them... and if you want the secret recipes he used to take home all those titles, he just revealed them all in his new cookbook, "Big Bob Gibson's BBQ Book: Recipes and Secrets from a Legendary Barbecue Joint." Yeah, it's required reading.