Well it was my second time making sausage and the first trying to work with casings. Those things can sure knot up while trying to rinse them. The casings averaged about 12 feet each. 32-35mm hog casings. And I used a 1 inch stuffing tube.
The first one was very hard to get on the tube. The rest went on fairly easily right out of the bowl of soaking water, but I ended up with some water in the casings as they went on the stuffing tube - or air, or sometimes both.
Things went fairly well, but now I have a few questions. How do you keep that from happening?
When I twisted the links, then picked the length of links up, many would untwist. I alternated direction of twist each link. How do you keep that from happening?
When you cut them apart and cook them, how do you keep the ends from untwisting and the contents from protruding out as they cook?
One last question for now. Somewhere I read (maybe in the recipes) to hang them until the casings dried and then refrigerate. What is the reason for doing this?
Anyway I had fun making about 25 lbs. of brats and bangers. Used four Bratwurst recipes from Len Poli's website - the Bramberg, Nuernberg, Swiss and Wurtenberg styles. And the Bangers 2 recipe from this website.
A couple of pictures of my efforts.