Greetings from another Ontarioan

[JONNYK]

Jon is the name and have had a OBS for a year, but not used much. Did the pizza Fatty yesterday from Bradley recipes. Totally awesome. Doing up some goose pepperettes today. Looked at a lot of the stuff on web and came up with 130d for 1 hour to dry, 3hrs heavy smoke at 10. Then 170 until internal temp of 152. We chickened out and used Backwood 25lb premix. QUestion I have. : had smoker at 150 thinking to compensate for temp drop. Put meat in and it has been about 90d for the past 1.5 hrs. Does this constitute drying at 130d for an hour ? I have just started to smoke and have boosted temp to try and get 150. Gues my second question is: is this normal??

[tskeeter]

Jon, welcome to the forums!

Hard to know exactly how to answer your question because I don't know how "some" goose pepperettes translates into pounds of meat and what temperature the meat might have been at when you put it in the smoker.

However, here's a shot at some answers based on some assumptions.

Is drying at 90 degrees for 1.5 hours about the same as drying at 130 degrees for 1 hour?  I'd guess they are close enough to do the job.  A higher temp will remove moisture faster, so I'd guess you have compensated appropriately.

I think your second question is are long temperature recovery times normal?  Yes.  Especially if you put a heavy load of meat in the smoker, or if the meat is unusually cold.  Please bear in mind that the Bradley was designed as a low temperature, slow cooking smoker.  If you look at the specs, you'll find that your OBS has a 500 watt heating element.  Not massive.  The puck burner adds another 125 watts of heating capacity, for a total of 625 watts.  A heating capacity that is less than the typical hair dryer.  But, it's all about low and slow.  So, patience is a virtue.

Forum members have developed several techniques to compensate for the limited heating capacity of their smoker.  First is to let what you plan on smoking sit on the counter and warm for about an hour while preheating the smoker.  Many folks do as you did and preheat their smoker to a higher temp than the temp they plan to smoke at.  This makes the extra heat the was absorbed by the walls and racks of the smoke available to be transferred to the meat when you put it in the smoker.  Several forum members keep a foil wrapped brick or two in out of the way spots in their smoker to act as a heat sink.  This speeds up temperature recovery when you need to open the smoker door or when you have added cold meat to the smoker.  Some forum members have even been known to preheat their smoking bricks to 400 degrees in the house oven to aid in temperature recovery during difficult smoking conditions.  The conventional wisdom here is to always use boiling, or as near to boiling water as you can get, in your puck bowl.  No point in devoting the limited heating capacity of your smoker to heating water instead of cooking the meat in your smoker.  Remote thermometers are also helpful in that they allow you to monitor the internal temperature of the product you are smoking without opening the smoker door and allowing heat to escape.  Remote is great.  Remote and wireless is even better.  I can monitor the smoker from my recliner while watching the football game.  The Maverick ET733 is the latest version of a wireless remote thermometer popular with forum members.  And many members make it a practice to continue to run their puck burner after the smoking part of the cycle is complete.  An additional 125 watts isn't a lot, but it is 25% more than the stock heating element alone.  Or, you an soup up the heating capacity of your smoker by adding a second OEM heating element or replacing the stock element with a higher capacity element.  Note that either of these changes requires abandoning the stock heating element control system, which is not designed to handle the amount of power these mods require, (most members switch to an appropriately sized PID; the Auber plug and play versions are popular).  Some how-tos for these mods can be found elsewhere in these forums. 

Here's something else for you to check out.  Our Time Tested and Proven Recipes at www.susanminor.org.  Great recipes from the forum's most experienced smokers.  And lots of tips and detail specifically for your Bradley smoker.  Helps you be a Smokehouse Hero right out of the gate.     

[ragweed]

X2 on what Tskeeter advised.  Plus leave your top vent open.  This lets out the moisture and actually helps increase the box temp.

[tskeeter]

Great point, RW.

The general rule of thumb among members is keep the vent at least half way open.  And if you are smoking poultry or fish, or drying sausage 3/4 open is appropriate.

Many forum members always keep their vent all the way open, or have even removed the vent damper.  After an unfortunate sausage smoking experience, I went damperless.  I goof proof as much as I can.  With me, it's not a question of if.  It's a question of when.

[JONNYK]

Thanks muchly tskeeter and ragweed. Really appreciate all the info.
We did up 18lbs of meat- 10lbs of goose breat and 8lbs pork fat. Loaded about half yesterday and will do the rest today. We really like the backwoods Jalepeo mix. Ended up drying for 1.5 hrs. 3.5 hrs smoke @ 150. Finished @ 170 until internal temp of155. Used paper casing which our butcher supplied and what he uses. NOTE: I will not submerse in cold water to stop cooking process today. Made hanging the to dry a touch dicey. Let dry over night and probably rest of today.  :-\. Methinks that I will drop fat to 50% next time as they seem a bit greasy.
Any suggestions on cooling. Is the water cooling critical?
Beautiful weather here today. Waterfowl season opens here on the 27th so we will be starting to replenish the freezer.

[tskeeter]

Jon, the target fat content of sausage is generally about 25% - 30%, more or less.  So I agree with your thought that your fat content is a bit high. 

If you are getting a greasy feel on the outside of your sausage, you are experiencing what is frequently call "fat out".  The temperature has gotten so high that the fat is the sausage is melting and soaking through the sausage casing.  Often, this results in a dry sausage with poor mouth feel.

In the future, I'd shoot for an internal temperature closer to 152. 

I'm guessing that you are using a stock smoker.  You may already be aware that stock smokers are subject to some temperature swings.  With you smoker set at 170F, your actual operating temperature range will swing from about 160F to 180F as the heating element cycles on and off.  The over run and under run are normal for the type of heating system controls in home ovens, smokers, and the like.  To limit the impact of the over run (180F is high enough to cause fat out) you might try reducing your temperature set point so that the temperature over run is at least partically accounted for.

If you are planning to do quite a bit of sausage, fish, or cheese, you might want to consider investing in a PID.  Because of the way a PID works, it can control the temperature in your smoker to 1 degree +/- your set point.

When it comes to cooling your sausage, you want to get the heat out as fast as you can.  The thermal efficiency of water makes it ideal for this purpose.  But, the fridge works, too.  Especially if your fridge has a quick freeze feature.  In our fridge, the quick freeze function turns on a fan that circulates air in the freezer.  It also moves air around in the refrigerator, so if you have that feature, it will help chill your sausage faster than throwing the sausage in the fridge alone.

For casings, I've been using the pretubed natural casings from Syracuse Sausage (Syracuse Casing?).  First off, I like natural casings better than edible collagen.  And being able to do an ice water bath shortens my fiddling around time.  (I also use a hot water bath (155F - 160F) to finish cooking my sausage.  Saves some time, which becomes important when your smoking runs into the small hours of the morning. A counter top electric turkey roaster works well for this)  The pretubed casings have been well cleaned, do not smell like most natural casings, are very easy to get onto your stuffer horn and seem to have minimal thin spots.  Since I'm on the west coast, I order over the internet.  The natural casings have a self life of six months, according to the supplier.   

[JONNYK]

Invaluable info tskeeter, thanks. I have noticed that my cook times seem faster than what has been noted in the recipes I have followed. I have learned that my temp probe is an invaluable necessity. Has an alarm that sounds when about 10 d before set temp,then I monitor. My second batch just came out and looks a lot better.I waited until temp got to 200, had meat on racks ready to go to minimize amount of time door was open and bumped up my dry time to 1.5 hrs. Temp only dropped to 100 d.   Pulled them just as temp reached 153 . Don't have a fast freeze, so went into the deep freeze for 20 min on the racks.
We went higher on the fat this time cause we screwed the batch of sausage we made last fall. Too little fat and we used a fine grind. Also used no cure and didn't dry them. Result was like eating yucky sand. LOL. (I give them to my cousin Mikey(seriously) He can choke down any wild game.) Will take your advice for the next batch as we still have about 20 lbs of breast left. 
What would you suggest for dry time. Unfotuneatly I dont have a controlled area. They currently hanging in the basement at about 70 d. Yesterdays seem to be coming along. 2-3 days?
Newbie question .. What is a PID ?
I appreciate the time you have taken to respond. I pretty sure I have read some of your same comments on some other posts, so admire your patience.

[Smoker John]

Welcome from Alberta Jon

[tskeeter]

Jon, what I do to let my sausage dry a bit and allow the cure to work and the flavors from the spices to develop is to stuff my sausage, then put it in the fridge over night.  The outside of the casing dries and some of the moisture in the sausage evaporates.  But not enough to cause dry sausage.  Then I dry for an hour in the smoker at about 125F before applying smoke.  After the sausage is smoked, I give it several hours to overnight in the fridge before packaging and freezing.

To help keep your sausage from getting that sandy texture you experienced (probably caused by a low fat content), some recipes call for non-fat dry milk or soy protein concentrate.  They help retain moisture and improve the mouth feel.  But you can't taste it.  It takes a lot.  I made Rytek Kutas smoked polish sausage recipe a few weeks ago.  It calls for 2 cups of non-fat dry milk or soy protein concentrate for 10 pounds of meat.  (Go to www.sausagemaker.com and look for the smoked polish sausage in the recipe section.)

What is referred to in these forums as a PID is a type of temperature controller.  PID stands for proportional integral derivative.  The way it works is that when it turns your heating element on, as the temperature it is reading approaches your set temperature, the PID cycles the power on and off in short bursts.  This allows the PID to creep up on your set point temperature without significant over run.  And, it also kicks the power on before your temperature drops as much as standard heating control systems allow.  The Auber plug and play PID's have an autotune routine that makes the PID "learn" how fast your smoker loses heat, warms up, etc., so that it can control the temperature over a tight range.  It may take a few cycles of running the autotune routine to get the control range really tight. 

[JONNYK]

Back at ya Smoker John. Got a son in Edmonton.
Once again I thank you tskeeter.  The batch I did yesterday sat in fridge overnight so probably why them came out better. Kept notes on this and will put to use next week when we do next bactch