Summer Sausage Help

[YooperDog]

jack_frederick is looking for some assistance. He is having an issue creating a new thread this his thread now.

[jack_frederick]

First off, shout out to YooperDog. I just randomly selected him in the chat feature as I was looking for help. Jonathan or Austin needs to send this dude a hat! I am having issues posting and he worked to find a solution and ultimately just made me a new thread.

Impressed with this community already and proud to be a Wichita, KS native and have Waltons in my home town. The people in store have always been awesome.

[jack_frederick]

My primary questions are:
1.) Every time I cook SS about half of my product is done in 6-7 hours. The other half requires me to push my cooker to 205-210 to get it to the 160 IT. Why?

2.) We’ve had bad luck with the last two batches with the casing getting hard and/or the outer most layer of meat being hard and dry. Why?

[jack_frederick]

Background:
I am using a Yoder YS640
I am using 2.4” x 12” mahogany fibrous summer sausage casings
I am using sure gel and sure cure
I am using waltons SS seasoning (H, jalepeno, giggawatt and caraway/onion)
I am using 90/10 ground beef.

[jack_frederick]

More Background:
I am cooking 20# batches at a time.
My temp schedule has been 150 (lowest cooker setting) for the first 6 hours and than I have to go to 160 to get anything past the finish line. Than (as mentioned in my question) I have to go from 160 to 210 in 10 deg increments to get the rest of the sausage finished - typically takes over 12 hours to finish them all.
hand mixing
sits overnight in fridge before cooking.
using waltons 11lbs stuffer
using high temp cheese
once meat hits 160 IT I ice bath for 30 mins and go direct to fridge overnight.

[mdseaside]

Sounds like your smoker has hot areas and cold areas. You might try rotating your product from one area to the other 1/2 way through the cooking cycle. You can put remote thermometers in different areas of the smoker to see if there is any difference. Hope this helps.

[jack_frederick]

mdseaside

Thanks! I should have mentioned that every sausage (23 rolls) have the hard outside meat layer.

I do monitor IT or the sausages with four temp probes.

I agree, I do have hot spots. To help navigate this I put two temp probes in the sausages near the smoke stack, one on the top and one on the bottom rack and two probes on the opposite side also top and bottom rack. The smoke stack is my hottest area and opposite is coolest. When I have a temp delta of 10° F I rotate all the meat.

[craigrice]

you need to up your temp. slowly and add a water pan to avoid case hardening by adding humidity to your cook schedule with case hardening the outside cooks and the inside doesn’t

[jack_frederick]

craigrice

That’s helpful, thanks! Can try water tray.

Do you think 90/10 is too lean? Would that lead to case hardening?

[craigrice]

slow temp. rise and good protine extraction and roughly 80-20 to 70 -30 for fat content mixing 30-40 percent pork or beef will make a better end product

[jack_frederick]

craigrice

Got it! Thanks. Merry Xmas

[craigrice]

cooking/smocking with a slow temp. rise lets the product cook more evenly

[Daniel Nolte]

jack_frederick the best way is to rotate your product ever hour so they all get to the hot parts at one time rotate rotate rotate

[akdave]

I have had great success with SS with 80 meat 20 Beef fat and 140degree 1 hour no smoke 2-4 hours 140-150 smoke then put large pan under product with hot water and sponges and raise temp to180 till internal temp 160. Adding a convection fan to smoker really helps to. The hot water really helps to even out temp in smoker And prevents hot spots