Home made rubs

Here's my Espresso Cocoa recipe, I use this alot on beef, pork and poultry.

1 Tbs. finely ground espresso coffee beans 
1 Tbs. pure ancho chile powder 
1 tsp. natural cocoa powder 
1 tsp. granulated garlic 
1/2 tsp. ground cumin 
1/2 tsp. brown sugar 
1/2 tsp. ground fennel seed 
1/8 tsp. ground allspice 
4 tsp. kosher salt 
2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper 

Google top ten rub recipes, it's on the About food website. That's where I got the Memphis rub and best odds brisket rub, use those two quite a lot , have to as here in Oz there's not much choice to buy.

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My Personal favorite Bobby Flay rib rub:

1 tablespoon cumin

1 tablespoon paprika 

But I half the salt.

A couple of years ago I collected about 100 rub recipes from around the web that were described as all purpose, or mainly for pork, or mainly for beef.

I can't find the summary I wrote then, but here are some factoids.

Ingredients most often used, and average percent by volume for that ingredient.

Black pepper 11%
Sugar 27%
Paprika 22%
Salt  (tie w. paprika) 14%
Garlic Powder 9%
Onion Powder 8%
Chili powder 13%
Cayenne 4%
Cumin 6%
Mustard powder 8%
Thyme 5%

The balance between sugar and salt for pork recipes often leans heavily towards sugar, whereas beef recipes go the other way, w. a few having little or no sugar.

I found 54 different ingredients used, with some being mixes such as "seasoned salt," of "curry powder." Chilli powder was had to categorize, because some times it appeared to refer to blends that contain garlic and oregano w. ground chillis, and other times just a reference to some sort of ground chili.

The average recipe has 8 ingredients. A few have as few as 3, and one had 15.

The oldest recipes I found would just be brown sugar, salt, black pepper and cayenne.

I came up w. a recipes that used an average proportion of 10 ingredients. The result was, well, average. Maybe even mediocre. One thing I found was that even though the recipe has lots of paprika and black pepper, the flavor of those faded away during longer cooks, even though I used freshly opened tins of good Hungarian paprika, and ground the pepper fresh.

Along the way, I've read that many prize winning chili recipes use multiple waves of spicing. I've started messing w. that method for rub application. I use 1 batch before cooking, and another later that contains flavors that don't last as long, such as black pepper.

http://community.tasteofhome.com/community_forums/f/30/p/612101/5104145.aspx#5104145
is the method I used for making ribs before I had a BGE.  I still make my own rub based on their recipe...but I've made a bunch of adjustments (omissions, additions, quantity changes) over the years.