Let me start by saying that this is a recipe originally posted by diggingdogfarm many years ago, so he gets proper attribution right up front.

I wanted to make the American Classic Wisconsin style bratwurst, epitomized by the Johnsonville brat we all have tried and see in every supermarket. A search here at Walton’s for brat recipes gave some fantastic info on how to make them, including a new video by Jonathon 4 days ago that is an excellent all in one tutorial.

However, 99% of all posts and threads discussed using premade spice mixes available from Walton’s. I am sure these are fantastic, but as a cook I always want to know exactly what spices are in a flavor profile, so I can tweak them to give the exact perfect result I want. This isn’t possible with a premixed spice, though those absolutely do save time and give an outstanding result on attempt #1 for thise not interested in developing their own recipes.

I started with Stanley Marianski as a source, he has a “German Bratwurst” and a Milk and Egg Brat. I can attest both these are authentic, having lived in Germany and eaten a lot of brats in Duesseldorf, Koln, Franfurt, Kaiserslautern, and Ulm/Munich (cities I was stationed in flying for USAF). However, these are not WISCONSIN style–the German one has caraway, and the milk egg one is the whitish fine grind mace/cardamom/ginger/lemon-zest one. I love both, but needed more current and local recipes.

I spent about 10 hrs reading every thread and post I could find on various for ums and YouTube. 2guysandaCooler, SmokingMeatForum, DuncanHenry, lpoli, meatsandsausages dot com (Marianski’s recipe site), wedlinydomowe dot pl the giant Polish sausage community, etc.

I copied down every recipe I found. I compiled all brat recipes into a spreadsheet, with all ingredients normalized and converted to 1kg meat block. That is, I converted all ingredient T and tsp into grams, then expressed them as a % of meat block whether 5lb, 25lb, 1kg, etc. I’ve weighed all the spices per tsp 4 times and averaged, using 3 different teaspoon measures, but of course difference spice grinds could give 20 to 40% off.

All this allows me to look at 20 recipes at once and see EXACTLY where spices vary and by how much. It really lets you see the critical flavor components and their acceptable ranges, when you have 20 recipes that all got rave reviews when tested.

In the end, 30 or so experienced sausage makers who made these recipes all seemed to agree on one profile. The exact same recipe, when converted, was seen in 10 threads or so, from multiple sources.

This isn’t my recipe. I can say that this recipe matches the one given by diggingdogfarm on various forums, as well as numerous other posters over the years after he first posted it.
All ingredients, as accurate as anyone can measure.

Just in case other folks are looking for good Wisconsin or Johnsonville clone brat recipes, like I am, every person of about 30 makers has said it is spot on perfect for Johnsonville or Wisconsin
Style. There is a touch of sweetness, nutmeg and ginger do the heavy lifting in this style. Having seen this recipe show up numerous times now as folk’s Best Recommended, I would say it is a good one to use.

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I stuffed them into 21 mm fresh collagen casings, the super delicate ones you use for breakfast links.  Mostly because I had a partial stick that was just the right length for 5 or 6 lbs.  I made 2kg meat, then added about 13% water to stuff thru 13mm tube, giving 2.25kg or about 5 lbs.

Would have used hog casings, but this was sausage #3 of the night (3 lb Taylor Pork Roll, 9lb Jimmy Dean clone breakfast sausage, and 5 lbs of this brat).  So I needed to just grab an easy casing and finish, so I didn’t keep my kids awake while cleaning 😉

I steamed these with a few T of water then let them brown. The beer is Paulaner Hefe Weizen.
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Recipe from diggingdogfarm “old family recipe”:
1000g fatty pork butt
1.7% salt, 17g
0.5% sugar, 5.3g
0.25% black pepper fresh ground, 2.5g
0.22% nutmeg, fresh, 2.2g
0.05% coriander toasted ground, 0.5g
0.035% celery seed, 0.35g
0.005% marjoram, 0.05g
0.14% ginger ground, 1.4g
No binder
10% water, 100 ml or 100g

The marjoram amount seemed pointless, about 1/16t, so I bumped it up to 0.5 g. Marjoram is the primary flavor of Polish sausage, with garlic.

I like giving recipes in grams per kg meat block, or expressed as % of meat block, so anyone can just multiply for their meat amount. Teaspoons and Tablespoons are woefully inaccurate, especially considering the small spice amounts we are using, but the weight in grams is always exact. However… for those who are wedded to lbs and teaspoons, here is a picture of the 5lb recipe and my conversions:
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The next project for the chamber is Calabrian Soppressata. With the meat all ground all the spices were added along with the starter culture. The meat was then stuffed into 70mm casings and then the casings were netted and dipped into mold 600. Mold 600 is a bacterial culture who’s sole purpose is to ensure the beneficial surface mold wins the battle over the pathogenic bacteria. In the picture below you can see the while broth of the mold on the Soppressata. You want this white mold. The mixed mead that was left in the bottom of the stuffer and in the stuffing tube became my PH test sample. With the Soppressata in its casing I fermented them in my cleaned and sanitized smoker. The temperature (80 deg.) and humidity (90%) were controlled by non-WiFi Inkbird controllers. The PH was tested using an Apera Instruments PH60S Food Tester on the PH test sample. My starting PH was 5.97. After 36 hrs. the PH dropped into a safe range of 5.13. With the PH where it is supposed to be the Soppressata’s we’re then weighed with the starting weight as well as the target weight loss. As with the Coppa’s I’m looking for a 40% weight loss.
Hopefully the target weight loss on these as well as the Coppa’ will take 2-3 months followed by a few months of the finished product vac sealed for equalization. Naturally there will be a lot of eating prior to the finished product being equalized. Thanks for reading this rather long post.
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Hi everyone, with hunting season vastly approaching I wanted to create a board to share about your hunting and fishing outings before your processing and cooking starts!

I’ve got several things planned for this year. Whitetail hunting at my house (1st year of owning property). Dusky grouse and rainbow/brook trout in south central Colorado. Will share the adventures soon!

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Sous vide sirloin tip roast, smoked crab poppers, smoked creamed corn, smoked bourbon apple cobbler.

My 13 year old son started shooting sports through 4H about 8 months ago. He qualified for the state shoot In the junior division in trap and sporting clays. He shot on a 4 man team . They took 1st place in sporting clays and 2nd place in trap. The big stage didn’t seem to bother Cooper. He shot his best round of trap ever with a 24 of 25. It was only his 2nd time ever to shoot sporting clays and he shot a 41 of 50. So to say the least I was a pretty proud dad. His coach was about as happy as I was. He was amazed at how well he shot with such a huge crowd around. Now we have to see if we get to shoot in nationals.

Made a few pounds of one of my favorite brats, Walton’s Hatch Green Chili seasoning. I used Walton’s 30-32mm Pre-tubed hog casings. Love these brats! Thanks for looking🙏

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Well I just got word that our beef is done and ready for pickup at the processor. I wanted to share my numbers with you all. I’d say this could be done just about anywhere if you aren’t picky about the breed and are ok with grass fed and finished.

We got the cow from a friend, this one was a cull cow since she didn’t end up carrying a calf. Based on the finished yield, I’m estimating her at about 700lbs. I’m not sure on the weight of steaks that we got off her; I’ll know that this weekend when I take delivery. We ended up with 200 lbs of burger, I’m estimating 240 lbs total protein.

All in we are $880 invested in the cow. This includes variable expenses such as feed and minerals as well as the purchase price and the cost of processing. Final cost per/lb should be about $3.66/lb which is beating the grocery store around here by a considerable margin. Fingers crossed that it tastes good!

Earlier this month I had a post titled “ 2 bone-in pork butts = 2 Coppa’s, Chevalatta and Holly breakfast sausage”. Since then a lot has happened. The Coppa muscles are cured and my old kitchen refrigerator has now been converted to a curing chamber. I disassembled the refrigerator cleaned and sterilized it. I’m controlling the temperature with a Inkbird ITC-308 and humidity with a Inkbird IHC200. Both of these units are WiFi enabled so any alarms or adjustments can be done locally or through my phone or iPad. Humidity is maintained with a humidifier to raise the humidity and a dehumidifier to lower the humidity in case the humidity gets to high.
So with the Coppa muscles cured I rinsed off the mild Coppa but I wanted to maintain all the spices on the hot Coppa. Once the Coppa’s were ready they were wrapped in a Premium Dry Curing Wrap and then put into a netting. They were then weighed for the start and target weight, I like to go 40% weight loss. This should take 2-3 months. After the Coppa’s were complete time to move on to the next project. Please see part 2 of this post since there were to many pics to post in one post. Thanks.

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I have made venison smokies using sheep casings but this was the first time making venison snack sticks using Walton’s 21mm collagen casings. They tasted good but maybe not as pretty as some of the pictures of snack sticks I have seen on this website.
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After researching all the labor day meat sales, I saw Sam’s club had Choice brisket for $3.68 a lb. I called up, sat on hold 10 min, then asked a guy to check to make sure they had some as I wanted several. Yes, they had plenty, so I drove up.

When I got there, all they had were Prime brisket for $4.21, still a great deal. I found meat dept guy, asked him where the Choice were…none in stock! Turned out it was the guy I talked on phone to, he said he hadn’t looked close. Then he immediately said he would mark some prime down for me for the trouble. He priced it 25% off! I ended up getting two for $3.21 per pound.
So now I’ve finally got my “Once in a lifetime Good Meat Deal” 😉
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I ended up buying $340 of various meat and spices. Pork butts, bellies, loins, tenderloin. Chicken.
Took me a while to cut it all up and vacuum seal in usable sizes, cut each brisket in 3 pieces and separated most of fat. By the time I was all done, labeled, and cleaned up, I didn’t feel like grinding and sausage making 😞 well, the cleanup anyways. So I just grilled some pork butt steak and chicken.

Finished my first Buckboard bacon. Also my first time making and injecting a sweet pickle brine. It turned out great. Thanks to Deepwoodsbutcher for the posted info and inspiration. Thanks to Walton’s for this site and the Automatic injector syringe I used to inject the brine.
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I pickup up a couple of bone-in pork butts the other day. The reason for the bone-in butts was I wanted the coppa muscle intact. Boneless butts usually have the coppa muscle ruined. As my drying/curing chamber is nearing completion I wanted to start curing the meat for Capicola (or as people from Brooklyn call it Gabagool). I’m making a spicy and mild coppa. Between the curing and drying I’m hoping for an early December completion. The rest of the pork butts became sausage. I made 7 lbs. of Chevalatta, an Italian rope style cheese and parsley sausage. I’m not sure if this is type of sausage is known outside of the NY trip-state area but if you don’t know it you need to try it. If there is any interest I’ll gladly post the recipe. The remaining mince became breakfast sausage using Walton’s Holly seasoning, a family and personal favorite. This is the 1St time using Walton’s 22-24 tubed sheep casings. This was for me a game changer since in the past I just bought a hank of casings. Between untangling and rinsing using the Walton’s tubed casings cut my casing prep by at least 90%. Thanks for looking😎
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Last bit of Goose and Sandhill Crane from last years season is done. Turned it into Pastrami. This is one of the products I make that everybody can’t get enough of. Huge hit in elk camp every year.
Ready to fill the freezer again this year!
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Did about 30lbs of elk summer sausage last weekend. About 1/3 H Summer and 2/3 Jalapeno and added mozzarella and cheddar. Taste and texture are on point, but I’m only slightly concerned about the wrinkled casings. Smoke schedule was 125 for an hour vents full open, 140 for an hour added smoke and water pan with sponges and closed vents to 1/3 open, 155 for 2 hours, 160 until IT of 130 then into a 175 water bath to finish, then into an ice bath for 20minutes. The casings looked good and tight when I pulled them from the smoker they were wrinkled in the water bath.
Any thoughts on why they may have wrinkled?
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I’m not much of a woodworker, but the wife loves Bigfoot, so decided to make her one and surprise her with it. Set it up right inside garage door-first thing she saw late last night when door went up-was a hit!AD63B3B3-A212-406F-801F-83E3203B158A.jpeg 973D5B51-792D-4638-A4D5-3993B9EDBD17.jpeg

I know some of you love to take artistic pictures of your creations. I think it would be fun to see the pretty pictures. I’ll start!

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Austin and Jonathon weren’t exaggerating! That Walton’s Zesty Mojo seasoning is amazing!! This will be my go to seasoning for chicken from now on. I will never not have it! 58660EB9-97E6-44FA-96D1-50AD4852AB12.jpeg 38C59779-51C0-4D86-824C-C53C7B4078D4.jpeg

Also the Walton’s thermometer is a must. Can’t believe how cheap it is