Summer sausage and German Franks

[pikeman_95]

Nathan

First I have a couple of questions. Did you let your sausage come to room temperature  and dry well before smoking them.  A cold wet casing will not take on the smoke and will sweat and leave the casing with a rather pale unappealing look and have a lack of smoke taste. Next if you could add a fan or two to your smoker you will find that the air movement helps the smoke attach to the sausage. It will also help dry your casings well.

I do not use a Bradley smoker and my smoker has a super smoke generator. The smoke really rolls. You just might have to let your sausage have longer in the smoker.  The water bath will wash some of the smoke off the casings but if you have enough penetration the will still maintain the smoke flavor and will still bloom out well.

When I get home form work I will send you the summer sausage recipe. We have made several thousands of pounds with this recipe and if you have access to a bulk spice store you can make it up in larger batches. I make a 100-200 pound units and just have a multiple to figure out how many ounces of the spice blend I need for the pounds of meat that I am using to make into sausage. [1.087 oz of spice blend / 1 pound of meat] [or something like 10.87 oz of the blend for a 10LB batch]. Simple math but it seems to work well and nobody ever shows up with just the right amount of meat. This last weekend I had enough summer sausage spice made up to 250# of sausage. We did 160# of summer sausage and 120# of German franks. We will still use up the Summer sausage spice some time after hunting season.

I would encourage any sausage maker, to weight the combined weight of a sausage blend and record the number. This way they can adjust the weight for odd sausage weights.

We smoked our summer sausage for 2.5 hours and you saw the color when it came out of the smoker. We had to take a little longer then normal because we had the smoker stuffed with 120# of sausage. It just took a little longer to get things up to heat with that much meat.
Even with driving the main burner harder the fans keep from having hot spots. None of the casing had any fat-out in the lower tips.

[pikeman_95]

I found the link to the SS recipe and made some necessary edits. So here you go.

Here is the SS recipe that we have worked up. My sausage making partner and myself bought the basic recipe from a spice manufacturer that went out of business. We have modified it some to our taste. We substituted cracked black pepper for whole peppercorns as neither of us liked the whole peppercorns. We both like lots of mustard seed to chew on so we really kicked that up. We are about middle of the road on garlic so if you like lots of garlic you could add up to a 1/3 cup of minced garlic for a 30# batch of sausage. Do not add garlic salt because the salt is where it needs to be with out adding anything more.
This is the recipe that we have made our large batches with. I would guess we have done more then 2000# over the years. I know that the group that we make sausage with swear buy it.

The recipe makes enough spice blend for 100# of Summer Sausage. You can cut the recipe in half or 1/4 and just use the calculated charge rate expressed in the formula. I work at a chemical plant so I treat everything like a chemical concoction. Sorry! The nice thing about doing it this way you multiply the pounds of meat that you have by 1.087 and this tells you how many ounces of the spice blend to add to your meat.

WILD GAME SUMMER SAUSAGE
BASIC SPICE ADJUSTED TO OUR TASTE
For 100 lbs. Of meat        50 lbs. of well-trimmed wild game meat chunks
50 lbs of trimmed pork shoulder.] [I use Costco Pork butt](Mix pork trim together with wild game chunks and grind with preferably a
3/16" plate or with a 1/4" plate if that is all that is available. I would prefer to use a 3/16th plate if you can get your hands on one.

The following is for 100# of summer sausage.

2.5 lbs. none Iodized salt
2    lbs. Corn syrup solids / or dextrose
5 oz.    Fine ground black pepper
2 oz.    Ground coriander
2.5 oz cracked black pepper
23 oz.  Mustard seed
4 oz.    Garlic powder [add extra minced garlic at the time of actual production if you care for more garlic. 1//3 cup of minced garlic seems about right for a 30 pound batch
.01 oz. ground Thyme .............[7.3/8 tablespoons / oz]
.02 oz    ground Clove .............[4 tablespoons / oz.]

USE 1.087 OZ. OF THIS SPICE BLEND PER POUND OF MEAT THAT YOU HAVE TO MAKE. THIS WILL TELL YOU HOW MANY OUNCES OF THE SPICE BLEND TO USE.

For 100 lbs of meat use 4 0z. Of preg powder # 1 [sodium nitrite] meat cure. This is .04 oz/lb. of meat. (.04 X the number of pounds of meat you are processing.) One ounce of meat cure is = to 5- level tsp  which enough for 25 # of sausage

Just remember one level tsp/5pounds of meat.

DO NOT eliminate or reduce the amount of meat cure that should be in the meat. This is what protects the meat during the smoking process!!! Mix the meat cure in the spices just before adding the spices to the ground meat.

10 tsp liquid smoke [mix with water]
   
Liquid measurements
2 lbs. (32 oz.) of cold water per 100 lbs. Of meat
(.32 oz of water per lb. of meat) Mix this water with the liquid smoke then add it to the meat while mixing in the spices.
10 tsp. Liquid smoke (mix with the water before adding to the meat.) all of this is for 100# of meat.

[fong0041]

Kriby, thanks so much for the help!

I did NOT allow my sausage to rest and come up to room temp before hanging in the smoker.  I did not dry them.  The casings I have on hand are red and non-transparent, will definitely be ordering some of the clear ones you use so that I can monitor them.  Sounds like I also did not leave the sausage in the smoker long enough.  I will try to find a fan to enhance my little Bradley. 
I will likely be attempting another 10 lbs of snack snicks very shortly, may also try your recipe for SS.  I'll keep you posted!

Nathan

[Sailor]

Hi fong......sounds like several things happened to keep your sausage from getting a good color.  If a cold sausage is put in a warm smoker it is going to sweat.  Just like a glass of good whiskey on ice will sweat  ;D  Smoke does not adhere to a damp surface.  Drying the casings for at least 1 hour is needed to get moisture off the casings.  If the casings feel tacky you are getting a pellicle surface which will allow the smoke to adhere.  I find that with the Bradley I need at lease 2 hrs of smoke to get the color I am looking for.  Also after the sausage has gotten to IT a quick bath in ice water and then allowing the sausage to bloom will aid in bringing out an nice color.

[pikeman_95]

I thought you would like to see an example of what a fan can do. I have one of my fans hanging from the door of the smoker. When I do jerky I aim the air flow inward. When I do sausage I face the fan discharge at the door and let the air flow bounce off the door and fan out through the sausage. In the first part of this smoke I forgot to flip the fan around and the air flow hit the casings directly in front of the fan. Notice how the color changed in the area of the sausage that the air flow hit. I have circled this area. This tells you that air flow does help. I have 4 fans in my smoker. two low and two high. The two high are hanging on the doors. [my smoker has two doors, one front and one back.] I might try to move the door fans to the corners higher up in the smoker. I want to provide a tornado affect if I can. There is a little water on the camera lens because of the rain.

[fong0041]

THATS what that was!  I had seen the discoloration in your original post about your hot water bath method, and thought it was quite odd, but I figured it COULDN'T actually be that way.  The fan explains it!

Again, thanks for all of the great advice!

Nathan

[pikeman_95]

That was the first look in the smoker when we started smoking. Then I flipped the fan around.

Here is the picture of the sausage when it spent the rest of the time in the smoker. Everything looked the same.

[cobra6223]

hey Kirby, the hotdogs look relly awesome would you share your recipe? Thanks Tim

[pikeman_95]

I would like to take full credit for the recipe but I can't. We use High Country German frankfurter mix [google it] In Lincoln MT.

To this mix we add

2 cups mustard seed
2 cups brown sugar
1/4-1/2 cups cracked black pepper  [med or kind of hot]
1/3 cup of minced garlic or more to taste.
1 tbs ground celery seed
this is for a ]30 pound batch 15 pounds wild meat and 15 pork shoulder [Costco]We heavy smoke for 1.5 hours and then finish in a hot water bath. 160 F water 155 F core temp.
Franks are very juicy and tender
These franks are great boiled in a batch of sauerkraut or on the grill.
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[cobra6223]

Thanks Kirby, I appreciate it. Tim

[Stickbowcrafter]

Some delicious looking product there, nice work.

-Brian

[fong0041]

Well guys, my next try at snack sticks and summer sausages turned out MUCH better.  I made 10 lb batches of each in my bradley digital 4 rack.   When hanging the meat, I ensured they were close to room temp and were dry.  I found a fan out of an old computer tower, and an old phone charger to power it.  I put it in the very top of my smoker so the air flow was pointed down.  This definitely caused the meat directly under the fan to get much more color than elsewhere in the smoker, so for the snack sticks I rotated the position and smoked for four hours.  GREAT smoke/color, probably overdid it.  Next time I'll try 3 hours, those pucks are expensive after all. After 4 hours of smoking at 180 degrees, the sticks were at 150 F, so I just left them in there for another hour and skipped the waterbath.  Last night I finally got around to smoking the supper sausage.  I did 4x2.5 lb sticks and placed the fan directly in the middle of the smoker, between the four hanging sausages.  I smoked for 3.5 hours at 200 degrees, and prepared my hot water bath.  When I checked the temp, they were all at 160, so no need for the hotwater bath!  much less cleanup, sweet!  The fan helped to increase the convective heat transfer, so they got up to temp faster than previous tries.  So, I just put them in the sink of ice water for 10 minutes, then set them on the counter for two hours. MUCH happier with the results.  Thanks for your help guys! ;D