Summer sausage shelf life

[wildgameinmabelly]

Howdy y’all. I’m bout to make about about 25-30ish pounds of summer sausage with hi temp cheese added. My question is, what’s the shelf life once fully cured, smoked and vac sealed? Non-refrigerated vs refrigerated?

[Joe Hell]

wildgameinmabelly To be on the safe side I would refrigerate all of it and freeze what ever you won’t eat within a few weeks.

[Josh85]

wildgameinmabelly I agree. Keep it in the fridge and freeze what you won’t eat in a week or two.

[Jonathon]

wildgameinmabelly First, awesome name! Second, this is hard one because the curing and drying give you some shelf stability and if you use encapsulated citric acid, or drop the pH somehow) you get more shelf stability. The issue is that to be sure you need to have a pH meter and a water activity meter, without those you are guessing and eventually something will happen and you’ll hate life for a few days! So, just like Joe Hell said, freeze anything you aren’t going to eat in a week.