Sausage shriveling???

[turbold]

I am a newbie at sausage making. I have followed the directions exactly as it is in the sausage making book but my sausage always appears shriveled up. I know that it says I have used too high a temperature or cooked it too long when this happens. But, I preheat the smoker to 130 and apply smoke for 3-4 hours then raise the temperature to 160 and cook until internal temperature is 150. I am making a summer sausage and using 2 1/2 casings. Any help would be appreciated.

[DanMcG]

Have you checked to see if your thermometer is accurate? Do you have pockets of fat collect under the casings? How many hours does it take top get to your 150 internal temp?

[turbold]

Yes I have checked my thermometer and it is accurate. I do not have fat pockets forming under the casing. It took 16 hours to get the temperature up to 146. Thank you for your help.

[vagreys]

Can you post a recipe? What kind of fat are you using in your recipe? How did you make them? Are your sausages stuffed loosely or tightly or somewhere in between? There are a lot of reasons for the casing to wrinkle if we don't assume that everything went perfectly in the making.

[crustyo44]

Hi turbold,
You are not alone, I made csabai once that was minced and stuffed like I done many times before.
This time after drying and smoking the sausage, in pork casings, shrivelled considerably. The stuffing was too easy and I came to the conclusion that the pork was a lot more juicier than I ever had before.
The drying and subsequent smoking shrivelled the casings in my honest opinion.
I have never struck it since.
Hope this helps,
Jan

[Oddwookiee]

16 hours is a hell of a long time to reach temperature. I cook summer sausage in a 2 1/2" casing. I have yet to cook a batch over 8 hours, generally around 6. I'll run the house at 100F to put smoke to the sausage, then after a couple hours turn the air temp to 200 and finish it to an internal of 152 that way, still under smoke, then into the cooler and let it grab 3-5 more degrees before the fans end the cooking process. I don't have a problem with shrink at all. Granted, my end result is a moist sausage, not a shelf-stable dried sausage.

I use a pretty homogenous mix- 10% pork fat, meat & fat once through a fine grind plate then spice and nitrite-water mixture added in a bull chopper and cycled for about 15-30 seconds (depending when it starts to bind) before I scoop it out.

[turbold]

When you increase the air temp to 200 degrees does that not melt the fat in the sausage?

Thanks for the reply.

[Oddwookiee]

Not really. I use a convection smokehouse to it's not in the 200F environment long enough to smear out.