FOLLOWING six highly contested county sizzle offs, 11 butchers today go head to head at the prestigious final of the West Midlands Tastiest Sausage Competition.

County sizzle offs have been held over recent weeks to find a winner in the two categories of Tastiest Breakfast Sausage and Tastiest Speciality Sausage in each county.

The competition has been fierce, with more than 80 butchers from across the West Midlands entering, with the hope of getting to the final and being crowned champion.

The annual event is organised by Heart of England fine foods (HEFF), the regional food group for the West Midlands, in association with AGA.

The Grand Final of the West Midlands Tastiest Sausage Competition 2009 will be held today at the flagship AGA store in the Mailbox, Birmingham from 10am to 12.30pm.

The panel of judges will be headed, for the second year, by award winning chef and food writer, Sophie Grigson, with other judges including BBC Midlands Today’s Nick Owen and Sarah Falkland. The winners will receive a certificate and trophy presented by Sophie Grigson.

Sophie said: “I am seriously looking forward to judging the Tastiest Sausage Competition again. Last time it was such an enjoyable experience and I can’t wait to do it all again.

“I’m hoping the finalists are going to raise the bar even higher than last year and, in these difficult times, what better food to cheer us up than a good locally made sausage.”

The West Midlands Tastiest Sausage Competition was devised in 2001 to coincide with Farmhouse Breakfast Week, a promotion run by the Home Grown Cereals’ Authority to highlight the variety and taste of breakfast products.

The West Midlands Tastiest Breakfast Juice competition will be running alongside the sausage competition, following its highly successful launch last year. The juice can be blend, single juice or smoothie.

The popular Tastiest Apple Juice – Cox variety competition will also be staged.

In addition, the county finalists of the Schools Best Banger Competition will find out who will be crowned champion. HEFF received 78 entries from across the counties, with pupils detailing a recipe for what they thought was the Best Banger and producing a poster to advertise it.

The Tastiest Juice Competition and Schools Best Banger Competition will be held immediately after the Tastiest Sausage Competition, after 12.30pm.

Vicki Collins, of Heart of England fine foods, has organised this year’s event and says the Grand Final promises to be a heated competition.

“The standard of the sausages in both the Breakfast and Speciality Sausage categories has been very high so the final is going to be tough,” she said.

“It’s great that so many local butchers enter, year on year, and produce such delicious sausages, using a wide range of regional ingredients, it’s a real testament to the West Midlands.”