This last spring I gave a sausage making class of a sorts and our church men's group made 10.. 30 pound batches of German Frankfurters. That turned out to be 1000 Franks. The weekend before I helped my friend with a very large protable smoker weld new doors on his smoker. We started on a Friday night and ground all the meat and stuffer 6 of the ten batches. Each participant provided 15 pounds of wild meat of all sorts and I bought the pork and the rest of the materials spices, casings etc... I gave every body a sheet of instructions but I found out that guys just don't read instructions. Oh well only one guy showed up with frozen meat to grind. Saturday morning we started the smoker and started hanging franks in the smoker. After each batch was smoked we finished the cure process in my stainless hot water tank. We hold the water temperature at 160 degrees in the tank and take the franks to 155 * for 10 minutes. Then they went on the tables to bloom and each man wrapped his franks for the freezer. It was a lot of work but we had a great time. Next year we will branch out into some different types of franks but for this time I wanted to stay with a blend that would work out well.
Here we are loading the stuffer getting ready to stuff. Making sure that we keep all the air out of the meat that we can.
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Stuffing franks
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Here is a shot of the large stuffer that I built. Using the water pressure from the well.
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most took a try at stuffing their franks. Not always full casings but not bad.
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refilling the stuffer out of my bucket mixer.
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everybody found a job. These guys are tying some of the casings.
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Here is the picture of the super smoker with the new doors that we built the weekend before. They worked great. In the fore ground is the sausage finishing tank. the two white things that you see at either end are two pumps that I built to keep the water temperature very constant.
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I had three smoke generators running plus the fire at the end to provide the heat.
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The smoker would do 3 batches at a time and each batch required about an hour and half to get the smoke they needed.
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After the smoking process the franks were brought to cure temperature in the water bath. Each part of the crew had a assignment because it was just too much for one guy to keep tract of.
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For lunch we cooked up some great big burgers on one of the side grills of the smoker. This is quite a smoker.
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After the franks reached IT of 155 for 10 minutes they were flashed cooled in cold water and then placed on a table to bloom for about an hour. We did ten tables like this one.
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Not every one took their job as serious as others.
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This is part of the sausage making crew. I'm not in the picture because I have the camera
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We were tired but had a great time. This probably will be come an annual event.
I am impressed with all the tools you built
I'll say
Very nice everything.
And being with good friends........Priceless.
I just wanted to say that i have talked with Kirby and he is a heck of a nice guy.
Thank you for sharing the photos. Looks like you all had a great time.
What a great Job!! If I can find a tank I want Kirby to weld it into one of them smokers that looks great.
Wow, I'm impressed with the equipment, commentary, Pictures, supervisory skills and finished product. Thanks a lot for sharing !!! :)
WOW, that is an awesome rig. I saw some big propane tank smokers in Paducah (and other places), but they have the big doors that swing up.. I like your design better - more like big cabinets. Open one or both if necessary.
That is quite an operation you've got going there. If I made that much sausage, I'd burst.
We had to change the doors on the smoker. They were built to lift up and it took two guys to get into the thing. [one to grunt and one to check the meat, like real fast] I designed some hinges in my auto-cad program to make sure that they would swing. The doors take nothing to open and stay where you put them. They also don't leak. at the top of the doors there is a cam over clamp that pulls them closed tight.
Very nice, very nice indeed.
I just caught a look at this post and all I can say is ... AWESOME!
Quote from: Keymaster on October 09, 2010, 04:09:45 PM
Wow, I'm impressed with the equipment, commentary, Pictures, supervisory skills and finished product. Thanks a lot for sharing !!! :)
Ditto.
BTW, if I was there to help, I'd be the one with the napkin in his nose. ;D