Shipping sausage

[cobra6223]

What's the best way to ship sausage any distance? How do you pack it and do you use dry ice or freeze and ship? I may be taking some orders for sausage and want to ship it safely. As always thanks in advance everyone for your advice.  Tim

[beefmann]

im thinking vac seal them, freeze them .. then into a Styrofoam box of some kind with dry  ice , then  ship 

[Sailor]

Depends on what type of sausage you are trying to ship?  I ship cured smoked snack sticks, jerky, summer sausage all the time to my daughters, brother and sister.  I just vac seal them and off to the Post office for priority mail.  Never had an issue with them going bad and had a lost shipment that took 2 weeks to get there and it was still good.  Fresh sausage is a different animal as you have to keep it below 40 degrees during shipment.

[ragweed]

I do what Sailor said except everything leaves here frozen.  Haven't shipped fresh sausage yet.

[tskeeter]

Cobra, if you want to keep things cool, it helps to wrap the product in several layers of newpaper.  This is a variation of the FTC process where the layers of newspaper provide the insulating air spaces like the towel does in FTC.  The more layers of newspaper, the longer you can hold the temperature.

[pmmpete]

I frequently ship frozen sausage, fish, and meat with some dry ice by two-day ground delivery.  For example, a week or so ago, in pretty hot weather, I shipped a package of frozen fish by second day ground with a couple small pieces of dry ice on top of it, and it arrived frozen solid.

UPS and similar shippers allow you to include up to five pounds of dry ice in a package.  If the sausage and/or meat is frozen, it only takes a small amount of dry ice to keep it frozen for a couple of days. 

One reason my packages arrive frozen is because I use well-insulated containers.  A person I work with receives chilled medicine every month in a carboard box which is insulated with about 2.5 inches of foam, so I have an endless supply of well insulated boxes.  I also know people who periodically receive steaks from out-of-town suppliers.  They also give me all the well-insulated coolers I want.  A disadvantage of styrofoam ice chests is that UPS requires that you ship them in a box, which increases the size and thus the cost of the package.  However, you can increase the insulation around the meat by stuffing wadded newspaper between the ice chest and the inside of the box.

[cobra6223]

Thanks everyone really appreciate your comments and help. Tim

[NePaSmoKer]

I shipped smoked sausages to Iraq/Afghanistan vac sealed with no ice and they made it fine everytime. Make sure your sausage has been properly cured.

[cobra6223]

Thanks again everyone I really do appreciate it.