www.sausagemaking.org

Guys,
I know the recommended drying temperature for sausages is around 10-15 degrees Celsius. Sometimes it's given als 12-14 of 12-15, but always in this general range. I'm interested in the reason for this.

Why not higher?
I know Marianski et al say that S. aureus will grow at temperatures 15.6 C, however as I understand S. aureus does not grow at a pH over 5.2, so any sausage which has reached this pH should be fine, even at higher temperatures, shouldn't it? Also, at the 12-14 range LAB bacteria won't produce lactic acid anymore, which makes it a way of stopping the fermentation before all sugars have been consumed. Could this be the reason?

Why not lower
But why 10 or 12 degrees as a lower limit? Why not dry at 5 degrees C? or 8? I have not been able to find an answer to this. Some things I could think of were that lower temperatures would cost energy to produced, hence money. Or perhaps condensation water could form on the sausage?

Any thoughts?

Min pH for S. Aureus is shown as 4.2 on Marianski's website.

You can dry at lower temperatures, but there's a (potentially) greater danger of case hardening due to the air not being able to support as much water. However, Brican does it successfully on a large scale.

There is also a time factor - but the flavour can be tremendous - or so I'm told.

In my home set-up 10 -12°C works best for me. HTH

Phil

One way to think about drying is that you are trying to balance the rate at which water moves within the sausage with the rate at which water leaves the sausage. If one is outside that temperature range, my guess is that this becomes really difficult.

Thanks guys, this makes sense.

cashmkr2001 wrote:Guys,
I know the recommended drying temperature for sausages is around 10-15 degrees Celsius. Sometimes it's given als 12-14 of 12-15, but always in this general range. I'm interested in the reason for this.

Why not lower
But why 10 or 12 degrees as a lower limit? Why not dry at 5 degrees C? or 8? I have not been able to find an answer to this. Some things I could think of were that lower temperatures would cost energy to produced, hence money. Or perhaps condensation water could form on the sausage?

Any thoughts?

I do lower at work and would/will at home once I have the set up

I currently dry all my products at between 1C to 4C ~~ A lot of folks say that it cannot be done nor can you achieve the flavour profile as one does at 13C but in fact one can at the lower temperatures achieve IMHO a much better/deeper flavour profile