I'm Back...venison sticks and sausage this weekend ***UPDATED***

[Consooger]

First off Happy Holidays to all. I have been on quite a hiatus the tail end of last year to say the least. and the beginning of this year has been quite busy...buying the house, the wife is pregnant, lets just say that the smoker has not seen the light of day in months. That being said me and my Brother in Law and FIL are making 100 lbs of mixed venison sausage and sticks this weekend.

Hope to be back and post some pics and even take part in more conversation as well. It is something I have missed and am looking forward to getting back into again.

Cheers!!!!

John

[Smoker John]

Welcome back, look forward to the process & some pix.

[STLstyle]

I've got a large group doing our annual sausage run this weekend too!  Good luck I'll post pics as well.  Welcome back.

[wkahler]

Welcome back in the saddle is always a good feeling!!

[NePaSmoKer]

Hey neighbor welcome back. I was back up in Lehighton for a month in  Nov/Dec. Sounds like you got some sticks in the works.

[cobra6223]

just a friendly tip. It's been rumored that increased smoker use will cut down on pregnancies!!  :D Welcome back.

[KyNola]

Look who's back in the house!  Welcome back.

[PapaC]

Wow, a hundred pounds! That's going to be quite a party! Sounds fun, and congrats on the new addition to the family  8)

[Consooger]

So we ran with 75 lbs of venison sticks/sausage this time around. I have done sticks about 3-4 times (with the first time being on my own, what a nightmare that was)
Plan here was 25 lbs of fresh, 25 lbs of smoked and 25 lbs of teriyaki sticks. I was using sausage maker supplies for everything (I forget the hog casing size we used, but it seemed the normal size) I pulled them out and soaked  them over night. For the teriyaki sticks we were going to use the 21mm dark casings but I also used some left over 19mm casings from my last batch. For the fresh sausage we were just going to package up and distribute among us. For the other 50 lbs of sausage and sticks we were going to take to a local butcher to smoke for us, they normally charge us like 8 bucks for 25 lbs, so that gets dropped off today.

We were running 80/20 venison to pork ratio. Plan here was I was taking down our stuffer and grinder to keep at the in-laws house esp since we are moving in 2 weeks, figured we could keep it down there and would be one less thing to move in a few weeks. SO as I'm setting up everything my FIL decides to invite one of his friends over who does his own bag bologna and runs a small smoking operation on the side (pig roasts and beef and all) so this throws a wrench in the spokes of my plans, because I'm all set up on my plan of attack for tomorrow and now it changes. ***note on my FIL, he is PA Dutch, and is old school with everything, and loves having his friends involved in his stuff and changes plans last minute, so this had me irritated, but back to the story...

So his buddy decides to bring this old stuffer which is run off electric and bicycle chains and all and I'm all like what the heck is going on here....so he decides to use this old thing which looks like it came out of an old dingy basement and needs like 5 gallons of oil and lube to get it going and looks like it will shock you like Marv from Home Alone 2 if you decide to plug the damn thing into an electrical outlet. Needless to say I'm wondering why we even purchased all this equipment we have but I'm here to keep the FIL happy so his buddy shows up and away we go with grinding the meat and setting it all up.


grinding up the first time on a rather large grinding plate/mixing the pork with venison

the machine and mostly standing around




the machine (now I will add that I did offer my FIL's friend money for this because this thing was a beast) grinded very well, fed amazingly, and had zero issues. No blow outs when making the sausage either. I will add the only problem was if you didn't feed it fast enough the consistency of the sausage size was off but nothing you couldn't fix by holding the casing until full


supplies


ash tin full of fresh sausage


this was what my FIL did all day, separated the ropes, HAH


more fresh


Cabela's meat thingy full of sausage to be smoked


the sticks


now we had to use the cabelas sausage stuffer instead of the old style stuffer because the auger kept turning the meat around and we could not get a consistent enough stuff into the small casings. My FIL said that he didn't want to use the stuffer because he didn't want anything else to clean. He was glad that I suggested using the stuffer needless to say.

more sausage


And that's it. This was my first time making sausage myself and lets just say I'm addicted. I will most definitely be doing this WAY MORE OFTEN from now on.....

John

[wkahler]

Nope that is sweet success looks like!!  Hey even the old dinosaur machines work every once and a while LOL!!

[Saber 4]

That's some good looking sausage and that grinder contraption looks like it is a beast.

[Smoker John]

Looked like it was a successful day, nice looking sausage & sticks