Dry Cured Hot Salami

[Keymaster]

looking Good Mike, That white mold sure has a smell of its own :)

[Mr Walleye]

Keymaster

It sure does. Kind of an ammonia smell really.  :-\  ;D

Mike

[devo]

Just another quick update. My test chub is now at 935 grams so it's almost at a 30% reduction, I'm shooting for 35%. It has really slowed down, in the last 2 days it lost 34 grams.

Mike

Sure hope thats not to fast for drying out Mike. Seems fast to me. You should be averaging about 6-8 grams per day not in the teens. To me that just seems faster than it should be.

[Mr Walleye]

Just another quick update. My test chub is now at 935 grams so it's almost at a 30% reduction, I'm shooting for 35%. It has really slowed down, in the last 2 days it lost 34 grams.

Mike

Sure hope that's not to fast for drying out Mike. Seems fast to me. You should be averaging about 6-8 grams per day not in the teens. To me that just seems faster than it should be.

Hi Devo

It's all new to me so time will tell. The recipe I used said 70% humidity. I've been running 75%. That's based on the controller and my secondary gauge shows slightly higher at 78%. Initially it lost moisture faster and it's slowed down substantially. Basically at last weigh in it lost 17 grams per day.

Mike
I have my fingers crossed...  ;D

[Keymaster]

Keymaster

It sure does. Kind of an ammonia smell really.  :-\  ;D

Mike

The ammonia smell is the biproduct of the mold. Nothing to worry about unless you get odd color changes.

[Mr Walleye]

Keymaster

It sure does. Kind of an ammonia smell really.  :-\  ;D

Mike

The ammonia smell is the biproduct of the mold. Nothing to worry about unless you get odd color changes.

Keymaster

So far the mold is 100% white, not even any off yellow. The ammonia smell has dissipated over time. It's not as strong as it used to be.

Mike

[devo]

I'm sure it's all going to be good Mike. It just might be the kind of casings your using. I have only used natural casings such as beef middles and beef bungs. I know Keymaster used artificial ones and I think he said he had some slight case hardening that he thought came from a fan he was using. Just remember in this game slow is good

[wkahler]

Looks awesome!!  I so wish there was someone close to me on the forum to help/train me on the art of this stuff.  I am going to try sausage this weekend for the first time.  Just making some breakfast stuff first then going to make some Italian for the summer coming up here to see how it goes!!

[ragweed]

Looks awesome!!  I so wish there was someone close to me on the forum to help/train me on the art of this stuff.  I am going to try sausage this weekend for the first time.  Just making some breakfast stuff first then going to make some Italian for the summer coming up here to see how it goes!!

Read the post by Kevin G "Sausage making A to Z" in the sausage section.  That will get you a long ways.

[Mr Walleye]

Another update...

I just weighed my test chub again and it's 912 grams. So that's a 23 gram loss over the last 2 days or 11.5 grams a day.

Impatiently waiting...
Mike

[NePaSmoKer]

Mike

Outstanding.

Did you use protein lined casings?
Be sure to check pH level for the type sausage.

I use natural beef middles, bungs and hog for my dry cure.

White mold is good.
Gray, Black, Greenish blue is bad.

[Mr Walleye]

Yup, they are 60mm protein lined fibrous casings. I did check the PH during the fermentation stage and it got down to 4.8 As I understand it there is no real purpose in checking it now once it's in the dry cure chamber unless you simply want to know what it finished at.

Mike

[Mr Walleye]

Another update...

My test chub is at 872 grams so it is approaching my target of 865 grams. As I said before I'm new to dry curing but simply judging by feel it feels a little soft in the middle. I have a little case hardening for sure, however the color, smell and taste is fine. There are no signs of any nasty mold. It is still loosing weight so my thought is to let it continue to see if the centre firms up.

Here's a couple of pictures...





Mike

[devo]

Yes Mike very fine indeed. Like you said you do have case hardening. Looking around the edge from your photo you can see the darker tell tail sign. Nothing to serious though. I found letting them get to 40-45 percent makes a nice salami. Another little trick is not to weigh it for a couple of days after you make them  as you are just weighing moisture on the outside  of the casing. After a couple of days it will give you a more accurate weight.

[Keymaster]

Meat to fat ratio looks spot on. Nice job for your first wack at it.