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Hopefully tomorrow is the debut day! Following up on my previous post on casing (great advice btw), I want to soak the right legth of casing for the amount of mix I'm going to make (I'm assuming that once soaked, casings cannot be put back into the fridge for any significant period of time and expected to last)

I'm looking at 5lb in hog casings (linked) and 5lb in sheeps casing (not linked).

Any advice from the forum gratefully received.

I usually allow about 2.5 feet of hog casing per pound of meat for normal packing, sometimes I hit right on it and sometimes I have a little casing left over. I have not used sheep casings before, though I have read that one should use about twice as much sheep casing per pound as one would use of hog casing. I hope things come out OK, let us know.

If I have extra casing left over I squeeze out as much water as I can then I put it in a small plastic bag and add lots of salt, work it in. ( cover it and then add more). I keep it in the fridge until the next time( months). You will have to re rinse and soak the casing to use it again.

There is a table in the FAQ Section that is really useful.

http://forum.sausagemaking.org/viewtopic.php?t=767

Length of casing also depends on the size of casing you're using. I use 4 different sizes of casing and after a while you'll get used to extimating how much you need.

I filled some sausages at the weekend in hogs casings. I put about 10lbs of mix into 13ft or so of hogs casings.

I've never measured it before but I was quite proud of the fact that I filled them all and linked them without breaking any!!

Rgds,
FB