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To preserve or not to preserve - that is the question. Please can some one educate me about the following:

1) how much longer does a preserved sausage last?
2) what difference is there in the taste (if any)?
3) where do you get the preservatives from and how much do they cost?

This really is a sticky one for me because as far as I am concerned to preserve a sausage really defeats the object of making your own. However I now have a few people (and pubs) that would like to take my game sausages in season and I was wondering if preserving was the way forward to enable me to supply them fresh rather than frozen?

On a seperate note, this weekend I made a pheasant and apricot sausage, cooked them all in the oven, froze them down, (reason being the pheasants were frozen from the end of the season) and have just bought a couple back to life in the micro. Results really are very good.
Thanks one and all for your time and advice it REALLY is very helpful.

I honestly think the only method of preservation worth doing is freezing. If you vacuum pack and freeze, and consume within 1 or 2 months - it should be fine.

Hi Welsh Wizard, you certainly seem to be coming up with some interesting combinations. Just to pick up on your point of selling to pubs and the general public (maybe someone could confirm this or not) I was under the impression that if you were selling to the public you needed a Food Hygiene Certificate and that your kitchen may have to be inspected. Does anyone know any details on this?

Youre right Hobbitfeet, I don't know all the rules and regs for meat products as we do chilli sauces, but, the kitchen is inspected every year or so, 2 sinks required if more than 1 person is involved, food hygiene certificate is required, hazard analysis charts are now coming in and I think with meat someone else may clarify this traceabilty, correct labelling for trading standards amongst other things.......

If you want to sell to pubs you must have your premises registered with you local authority, they will not let you do this from your kitchen.
Secondly re the preservatives the easiest to do is metabisulphite this can be obtained at a home brew shop us it at 0.1% of the finished product.

If you choose not to use preservative than you need them to be consumed within 36 hours of production.

freezing without preservative I would give them 2 months tops, 6 months with preservative & preservative plus vacuum 1 year

Hope this helps

Regards
sausagemaker

Thank you one and all for all the advice especially re the Food Higiene Cert. I will ensure I go through all the hoops before supplying to the local pubs but first of all I have to estimate demand and then see if it will all be worthwhile. Therefore freebies are on the list at the moment purely for the consumption of swelly bellied landlords and landladies (not swellied bellied you understand!).

Re different sausages, next week I am going to try a Beef and Stilton sausage. I have already given venision and sloe gin a go which was yumy and also I have done a small batch of duck and Damson (spent ones after I had made my Damson gin) which was nice but a little too sweet for my tastes - never mind they did not go to waste only my waist!

Thanks again always interesting stuff.............