That's a lot of sausage. Looks great!

Thats a lot of sausage. We will be dling ours probably in Feb sometime. Hope we can get a cold weekend. Definitely not 800 lbs though, closer to 250 or maybe 300.

I just ate but now I'm hungry again!

So why 100% pork sausage instead of a mixture with beef? I've always done ~50% pork / 50% venison or beef or nilgai so have never thought of using all pork which is why I'm asking. Also I see you don't tie and hang your links, but instead hang them on rods with the ends open, do you lose any meat out the ends after hanging them?

How many pounds do you have hanging in the smokehouse, how many people did you have working and how long did take?

Have you looked at beef prices lately?
Also, nothing wrong with an all pork sausage. Most people would do well to make an all-pork sausage instead of a dry and chalky 50/50 pork/venison.

OilManAg91 said:

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So why 100% pork sausage instead of a mixture with beef? I've always done ~50% pork / 50% venison or beef or nilgai so have never thought of using all pork which is why I'm asking. Also I see you don't tie and hang your links, but instead hang them on rods with the ends open, do you lose any meat out the ends after hanging them?

How many pounds do you have hanging in the smokehouse, how many people did you have working and how long did take?

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We mix game with our sausage, usually about 70% pork 30% game for link sausage, and 50/50 for dried sausage. Some people use White Tail, some axis, some nilgai. One even used zebra in his batch.

There is probably about 750-800# hanging in that picture. There are about 15 of us that are all hands-on in the process and it usually takes us about two full days to get it all made. Lots of beer and bourbon is consumed and you usually need muck boots to wade through the amount of crap talked.

OilManAg91 said:

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So why 100% pork sausage instead of a mixture with beef? I've always done ~50% pork / 50% venison or beef or nilgai so have never thought of using all pork which is why I'm asking. Also I see you don't tie and hang your links, but instead hang them on rods with the ends open, do you lose any meat out the ends after hanging them?

How many pounds do you have hanging in the smokehouse, how many people did you have working and how long did take?

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I have the same question. Why are the ends not tied with string and then the sausage hung from the string?

Nobody around here ties the links with string. We make 10,000 lbs for the Fall church festival in Wall the same way. Pinch the casing and cut it. The casing dries back within a minute and no meat falls out. We feel like tying all the links is adding unneeded steps to an already long process.

Can I be adopted for the weekend next year?

If your bind on your sausage is proper, and you stuff the casing tight enough, it won't fall out of the casing. We tie ours mainly because it just looks better, and it's better for drying (I would be worried about the sections of sausage draped over the rod getting enough air). In fact, if you're making that much sausage, it may be easier and faster to run the whole casing, coil it like a rope, and drape it over the rods to smoke it. Might not work well for making dried sausage as you won't get enough spacing between the links (as they dry, they will sag and start to touch. That's not great.)

We tie the ends of the casing together and hang it from the tied part over the rods, that way the entire sausage gets the exposure to smoke and heat. More aesthetic than anything.

While I dislike the tying part, once you get a rythm going it goes fast. But we also aren't doing 800+ lbs, I am positive that would change the calculus on the process.

We cold smoke the sausage, so it is still completely raw after we pull the smoke, but it gives it a great smoky flavor when eating it. So we aren't too worried about that little spot hanging over the wooden dowel that doesn't get the smoke/heat. I'm sure we would tie them and hang from the string if we were smoking them to all the way done.

The sausage made around here by square heads is usually boiled if people are having it with breakfast like pancakes and eggs or grilled if people are having it for any other meal. I honestly don't know of anyone around these parts that smoked it all the way to done.

I think it's cool/interesting how it's made a little differently in all the pockets of Czechs/Germans across the state. I'd like to attempt some smoked all the way through one time just to try it out and see which way I like better.

If you want to do it right, you need a smoker with very good temperature control to increase the heat as the sausage cooks. That's why we don't do it. We cold smoke, let it hang overnight if the weather permits, and pull it down in the morning, leaving the links we want to dry.

Ahh, that makes sense then.

Yeah, we smoke all the way then refrigerate overnight (mostly because we are usually drunk AF by the time we pull it) and then vacuum seal and freeze the next day or two.

I make breakfast sausage that I don't smoke, just season, grind and package up to pull out as necessary. Also make a lot of just grind that we use in place of ground beef in most recipes. Never have gotten into the cold smoked links or brats, which one of these days I intend to make. Same with boudin, need to make some of that sooner rather than later.

HTownAg98 said:

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If you want to do it right, you need a smoker with very good temperature control to increase the heat as the sausage cooks. That's why we don't do it. We cold smoke, let it hang overnight if the weather permits, and pull it down in the morning, leaving the links we want to dry.

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Really isn't all that hard to do temp control.

I have a little smoker - 4x4. Initial heat and smoke is provided by the wood burning stove and as the fire dies down I turn on a gas burner inside and we control heat by gradually increasing the flame every hour until we hit 165-ish. Sausage has taken plenty of smoke by the time that happens so it's just finishing cooking at that point. My buddy's smoker is much bigger - something like 5x10 or 5x12. His is rigged up with a water heater burner and a thermocouple that turns it on and off depending on the temp setting. Wood stove provides the smoke while the burner controls the heat. We run probes into the meat and leave one hanging to monitor temps. His is pretty fancy compared to mine.

Only time we really have to do anything is when it's time to go bump the heat up a little, which usually coincides with a pee break, a need for new beers and a new game of bones.

We have an old gas oven that my dad found on Craigslist that we use to cook the summer sausage. We do that because my mom got tired of the house smelling like summer sausage for several days. The knobs aren't legible anymore, so we put a temp probe on one of the racks, and another in a chub of sausage. Only issue is you have to rotate them and switch the ones on top to the bottom occasionally so they cook evenly.