Jonathon no, no, no, lol. The seasoning bag did not expand. During the cooking/smoking process there was a chemical reaction which created a gas and expanded the meat which made the casings rupture on the summer sausage casings. The snack stick casings they filled with the gas and left them very spongy and some ruptured as well. Typically when you put your finished product into the ice bath the product sinks, these did not. They floated. I tried using that seasoning in a brat mix as well, upon taking the seasoning and mixing in with the water for better dispersion I noticed that it got very frothy. I thought I was doing something wrong. After a second attempt at snack sticks I got the same results. By this time I have made several hundred pounds of sausage and sticks with different seasoning with zero problems so I immediately knew it was a seasoning issue. I contacted Excalibur, on my phone call of explaining what happened the Rep said” oh are you the person that just sent in the photos”? Um, no I am not sir, he explained that he just received photos of the exact problem I was having. Upon them studying this they found that the tomato powder in the seasoning was extremely acidic creating that to have the reaction making the gas during the cooking process.
