So I've had my drying chamber up and running for a couple months now and after working through a couple small kinks things to seem to be going nicely and I have some whole muscle items drying. Now on to fermented sausages.... I got my chamber all built and purchased only a temp controller in the hopes that a tray of water at the bottom of the chamber would be sufficient to raise RH to 80%+ but so far no go. The temp is holding steady at 75-degrees F but the RH is stuck at 60%. I want to get this figured out before putting sausages in there but realized that adding fresh/moisture rich sausages might give me the necessary RH bump I need. I'd rather not have to purchase the additional humidity controller and humidifier if I can avoid it.
Couple points of reference...the chamber is a bakers rack with a plastic sheath for bread proofing and the heater I'm using is a small Crane ceramic heater plus big tray of water (hoping greater surface area would equate to greater humidity) with a couple quarts of water in it. The base of the unit is essentially open but I out a full sheet tray in the lowest slot so it's mostly closed up.