help with party sticks

[BigRed41]

ah ok.  Makes sense.

[BigRed41]

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. 

Over the holiday I tried another batch of snack sticks.  They were at least edible this time around. I think i made major improvements over the first batch i made, thanks to all the help on this forum.

The two problems I had is half the meat had small black spots on it.  It also appeared the meat was a little greasy for my liking.  I used 81/19 beef(1.75 lbs) with 0.25 of pork.  I used about 15% high temp Cheddar cheese( i think it was about 4 oz).  Are the black spots OK to eat?

I preheated at 130.  cooked for 1 hour at 150(no water in bowl up to this point).  Smoked for 100 minutes at 150(added water to the bowl for the pucks, but removed promptly when the smoke shut off).  Then raised temp to 170 till internal temperature was 152.  Took about 5 and 1/2 hours.  I only cooked 2 lbs of meat.  Vent was all the way open the entire time.

Suggestions on how I can improve with the black spots and extra grease?

[NePaSmoKer]

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. 

Over the holiday I tried another batch of snack sticks.  They were at least edible this time around. I think i made major improvements over the first batch i made, thanks to all the help on this forum.

The two problems I had is half the meat had small black spots on it.  It also appeared the meat was a little greasy for my liking.  I used 81/19 beef(1.75 lbs) with 0.25 of pork.  I used about 15% high temp Cheddar cheese( i think it was about 4 oz).  Are the black spots OK to eat?

I preheated at 130.  cooked for 1 hour at 150(no water in bowl up to this point).  Smoked for 100 minutes at 150(added water to the bowl for the pucks, but removed promptly when the smoke shut off).  Then raised temp to 170 till internal temperature was 152.  Took about 5 and 1/2 hours.  I only cooked 2 lbs of meat.  Vent was all the way open the entire time.

Suggestions on how I can improve with the black spots and extra grease?

Black spots are called black rain which is to much moisture in the smoker causing it to build up and drop back onto the meat, also having your vent closed off to much, my vent is full open all the time.

[BigRed41]

I had the vent open all the way the entire time.  Could the pork in addition to the 81% beef been too much fat causing more moisture?

[Mr Walleye]

I had the vent open all the way the entire time.  Could the pork in addition to the 81% beef been too much fat causing more moisture?

It's possible. When you are working with small numbers (2 lbs) it doesn't take much to change the ratio. The one thing you didn't mention was what the lean/fat ratio was in the pork. As an example, if the .25 lb of pork was mostly pork fat your final mix could have been around 70/30. I prefer my snack sticks a little leaner than my regular sausage. For me I prefer a final mix around 85/15 for snack sticks. For regular sausage I use around 80/20 to 85/15.

Mike

[Sam3]

I followed this thread closely, followed everything that was said here and made 5lbs of NePaS snack stiks myself last weekend. Total time for me was @9 1/2 hours. I did a plain 80/20 ratio and they came out good. Vent was wide open the entire time as well.
I'll post a thread about it tonight or tomorrow from my home computer.