Mmmmm Kielbasa......

[pensrock]

Great job Mike. Your kielbasa looks great.  :)

[Keymaster]

Those look fantastic!!! I saved the recipe, Thank you !!!

[Mr Walleye]

Mike,
Sounds good..........at what temp do you pull them from the bradley? Looks like you let them bloom in your garage...what temp is your garage at? Oh ya, if your finishing in a hot water bath I suppose you don't give them a cold shower do you?

Paul

I really don't go by temp. I mainly look for that nice mahogany color. In a uncrowded smoker it usually takes about 4 hours give or take a little. I do take the temp just after putting them in the water bath so I can estimate the time they need to be in there. I would guess they come out of the smoker around 135 degrees.

You are correct, they are blooming in my garage. My garage has in floor heat and is always at 68 degrees.

I have found I am more than happy with the finished sausage without the cold water shower. I keep an eye on them while in the hot water bath because it really doesn't take that long. I use a pair of long tongs and gently move the sausage around every couple minutes mainly for consistency on finishing time. I take them to 155 IT using this method.

Mike

[pfowl01]

Mike,
Thank you for sharing your method! I'll give it a try as I have 5lbs of the Sausagemaker's Roasted garlic sausage in the smoker as we speak. I always have a maverick probe in one of mine.....so I think I'll just take them to 135-140 and finish in the water bath with a 2hr bloom. Thanks again  ;D ;D

[Mr Walleye]

Mike,
Thank you for sharing your method! I'll give it a try as I have 5lbs of the Sausagemaker's Roasted garlic sausage in the smoker as we speak. I always have a maverick probe in one of mine.....so I think I'll just take them to 135-140 and finish in the water bath with a 2hr bloom. Thanks again  ;D ;D

That should work great.

Mike

[NePaSmoKer]

Mike

Casing sz?

Natural or collagen

Thanks Again

[watchdog56]

Nice looking sausage. How big isyour smoker to do 75lbs?

[Mr Walleye]

Mike

Casing sz?

Natural or collagen

Thanks Again

These were natural hog casings. Size was kinda a Heintz 57.  :D I was cleaning out a bunch of left overs. They ranged from 32 to 40.

Mike

[NePaSmoKer]

Mike

Casing sz?

Natural or collagen

Thanks Again

These were natural hog casings. Size was kinda a Heintz 57.  :D I was cleaning out a bunch of left overs. They ranged from 32 to 40.

Mike

Thanks Mike

Guess i gotta wake up the smokehouse from hibernation  :D

[Mr Walleye]

Nice looking sausage. How big isyour smoker to do 75lbs?

WatchDog

Here is a picture of my big smoker I mainly use for doing sausage.



Mike

[pikeman_95]

Mike,
Sounds good..........at what temp do you pull them from the bradley? Looks like you let them bloom in your garage...what temp is your garage at? Oh ya, if your finishing in a hot water bath I suppose you don't give them a cold shower do you?

Paul

I really don't go by temp. I mainly look for that nice mahogany color. In a uncrowded smoker it usually takes about 4 hours give or take a little. I do take the temp just after putting them in the water bath so I can estimate the time they need to be in there. I would guess they come out of the smoker around 135 degrees.

You are correct, they are blooming in my garage. My garage has in floor heat and is always at 68 degrees.

I have found I am more than happy with the finished sausage without the cold water shower. I keep an eye on them while in the hot water bath because it really doesn't take that long. I use a pair of long tongs and gently move the sausage around every couple minutes mainly for consistency on finishing time. I take them to 155 IT using this method.

Mike

I would like to jump in with Mike a little. The temperature that the sausage comes out of the smoker does not matter because you are going to finish it in the hot water. The thing you are trying to do in the smoke is get the smoke saturation that you want. I agree with Mike, I am looking for the deep mahogany color.  I am going to include some pictures of my tank and circulation pumps. I would suggest that if you use a turkey fryer for your hot water tank you work out some way of stirring the water. You also might want to put some sort of screen in the bottom of the container to keep the sausage from sitting on the bottom. As you sausage approaches the 155 degree temperature you can add just a little cold water so the bath is at 155 degrees. This way the sausage temperature does not creep up while you are holding it at 155 for 10 minutes. I cold water bath my sausage a little so that I never have fat out issues and nice plump sausage.  I cool them fast so they do not loose moisture due to rapid evaporation while they are hot. You will find out that natural and Fibrous casings work best for this process. I have not tried to do this process with Collagen casings but some have said that the casing can separate from the sausage.
Mike I have used digital thermometers from wally world but I dip the probe end where the wire goes into the probe in liquid vinyl the water does not get in the probe. This way I can let the probe sit in the water without worry of damage.


Here is the tank with the pumps.



Screen in bottom of tank



Sausage in tank



If you have any more questions give me a PM and I can give you details.
Kirby

[KyNola]

Mike,
That is an awesome load of sausage.  Great work!

[Mr Walleye]

Kirby brings up a good point regarding using a screen of some form in the bottom of the water bath to keep the sausage off the bottom. I use a cooling rack that fits nicely in the bottom of mine.

The only difference in the process that Kirby does is he takes his sausage to 155 degrees IT, then pours cold water into the water bath to cool the bath to 155 degrees and holds it there for 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes he cold water showers them to stop the cooking process.

In my process I take the sausage to 155 degrees IT but once it hits temp I pull the sausage and put it on my blooming rack. I neither hold the sausage at 155 degrees, nor do I cold water shower it. Basically my rational is both methods are accomplishing the same thing as I'm not stopping the cooking process. The only other difference would be the possibility of rapid evaporation while they are hot but I've done several hundred pounds this way with no signs of the sausage loosing too much moisture. In fact in my recipe I used to use 4 cups of water per 20 lbs of sausage mix and I have lowered that to 3 cups because finishing the sausage this way does produce a moister and more consistent finished product.

Thanks again for putting us onto this Kirby.

Mike

[pfowl01]

Kirby & Mike,
WOW...thank you for all the info ;D
Kirby....that is quite the set-up you have. I take it the water tank gets its heat from gas and you have some kind of pump circulating the water. Good call on the screen on the bottom.....I didn't think of that ;)

[pikeman_95]

The tank sits on a propane three burner stove base. The pumps are made out of motors taken out of some vacuum sealers that had failed. I use model boat propellers to provide the pumping action. The motors are 12 volts and I made some heat sink coolers for the motors for continuous running. I use a small utility battery for the power. the two pumps will run just about all day on one charge. The reason I hold the sausage at 155 degrees that in most of the information I know of. They tell you to hold the cooking temperature for at least 10 minutes to make sure that all bacteria has been killed.
a couple of pump photos








the heat sink with a small fan to force air through the heat sink.



they can really pump the water