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Ready to go - last questions

PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 7:25 am
by Swing Swang
It's all about to happen sometime soon...

Curing chamber now made and working.
Meat on order and ingredients sorted. Will use 10kg of shoulder pork put through the coarsest plate by my local Booker's.
Read Marianski's books (as well as a few others).
Have made some bacon just to get the feel of things and to ensure the curing chamber works.
Have some LS-25 culture in the freezer and casings in the fridge.

Chouriço day is 31 January.

Now I don't really know a huge amount about the LS-25 as it's not specifically mentioned in Marianski's book.
Anyone know where I can download a data sheet, what the optimal fermentation temperature is (I was going to start at 72hrs at 20C, 95% relative humidity).

Looking to the future was this the best culture to have chosen? Once I've build up confidence would you stay with a culture or try without?

When made in the Alentejo I'm guessing that the culture comes from a combination of the red wine that is added and the naturally fermented/salted bell pepper paste (massa de pimentão) that make up the farce.
I'm electing to use Spanish smoked pimenton because I've no way of calculating the salt content of the home-made paste that I've brought back from Portugal (on asking family how to calculate salt content in the farce they just tell me to do it by taste - but of course they have the experience, and I don't...).

Thanks

SS

Re: Ready to go - last questions

PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 5:28 pm
by johngaltsmotor
http://wateetons.com/wp-content/uploads ... AT2013.pdf

pages 23 and 25 have graphs for LS25. Hope that helps.

Re: Ready to go - last questions

PostPosted: Fri Jan 16, 2015 10:09 pm
by NCPaul
That's very helpful information for our members johngaltsmotor, thank you. :D

Re: Ready to go - last questions

PostPosted: Sat Jan 17, 2015 12:40 pm
by Swing Swang
Thanks - interesting document - will post again once things are curing/drying as I'm using a Trixie vivarium controller to run the curing chamber which might be of interest.

Re: Ready to go - last questions

PostPosted: Sat Jan 17, 2015 3:59 pm
by wheels
I'm guessing that you're not UK based, but over here we can get small tubular heaters that are cheap, robust and great for this job:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hylite-1ft-Eco- ... 00ID7UF7A/

HTH

Phil

Re: Ready to go - last questions

PostPosted: Sun Jan 18, 2015 9:45 pm
by Swing Swang
Wheels - actually I am based in the UK - I'll amend my profile to include this.

The controller that I'm using is:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trixie-Thermost ... emperature

Which seemed like a nice easy 'plug and play' option instead of going down the WH8040/STC-1000 route.

The only disadvantage is that the Trixie can either be used to cool down to a temperature (switch fridge on/off) OR warm up to a temperature (switch heater on/off) as the cooler OR heater are plugged into the same socket. i.e. it cannot be programmed to relay between heating and cooling cycles without first unplugging the heater and plugging the cooler into the same socket (and vice versa). This doesn't seem to be too much of a problem, but it may be necessary to leave a 25W heater on permanently depending on ambient temperature/target temperature/target humidity.

Re: Ready to go - last questions

PostPosted: Sun Jan 18, 2015 11:46 pm
by wheels
Sorry, the guys in the US use a vivarium heat bulb for fermenting, hence the confusion.

I don't see an issue with only having one output for the thermostat. If you use the fridge for fermenting, you'd turn the fridge off and use a heat source to achieve the temps required.

When drying/maturing, you'd plug it back in and use the box to control the fridge temp.

Very soon you'll realise that it can't do both and that to maintain a steady flow of goodies you need separate chambers for both! That's compounded by all the new friends that appear when they find out what you're making!

Is the hygrostat a single outlet, or are there two? When I posted the details of the tube heater, I was thinking of it to control humidity. When the fridge motor is running the humidity lowers, so: High humidity - heater kicks in - higher heat makes fridge motor run - humidity lowers. But that's part of the drying process rather than fermenting.

What's the pig? OSB? Tamworth?

I look forward to reading more.

Phil

Re: Ready to go - last questions

PostPosted: Mon Jan 19, 2015 9:45 am
by Swing Swang
The pig is an OSB that I took at Oaklands Pigs when I went on one of their husbandry courses back in 2013.
Hopefully will be in a position to get some weaners in 2017/2018 - that's the plan anyway.

Re: Ready to go - last questions

PostPosted: Mon Jan 19, 2015 12:52 pm
by wheels
Ah, I thought it was, they're lovely pigs.

Phil