Bone sour

[nate85]

Anyone have pics of what bone sour looks like. Had some hams that didn't turn out and trying to figure out what it is

 

[daveomak]

Bone sour occurs when the hams is not cold enough before curing...   It should be refered for 48 hours at <38 deg. F...   then injected with cure and salt along the bones and around the joints with cold cure/brine mix....    

It is from bacteria etc. along the bones...

It will have an "off" odor like rotting meat...  

What was your process for curing the ham ???

 

[nate85]

Well here what happened, my uncle butchered on Saturday while knowing I was away. They put them in a freezer that never gets cold enough to freeze, I know it was probably not any lower then 40 degrees F plus they stacked everything on top of each other......yea I know [emoji]128580[/emoji]. They didn't smell bad and weren't slimey when I got home Thursday so I put them into 5 gallon buckets with brine using pops method. I injected each ham(16-20lbs) 12-16 times with 4 oz of brine along the bone and through the ham( 8" perferated needle) and into my cooler system.(keeps it + or - 2 degrees at 36). There was 13 bacons and 11 hams. the bacons turned out fine but out of the 11 hams 5 of them had a sour smell to them and was slimey when I pulled them out. We cut the bad ones open just to see, most the bone marrow was missing out of the bone and the inside of the bone was black on 3 of the bad ones. The other two looked normal but didn't smell good. It didn't particularly smell just at the bone but the whole ham did. The other 6 hams where good but I did notice the brine was a little more discolored then usual when I pulled them. I've used this same method on close to 100 hams this year and these are the first that's went bad.

I told him it was from them sitting so long in that freezer but he said he's let them sit before and taken them to a differnt guy and never had a problem. The other guy uses a tumbler and his brine has a high content of salt and cure compared to pops methad( the reason I'm doing them in the first place) Hes not particularly blaming me or anything but I'm just looking to see if I went wrong somewhere. I was also thinking maybe one ham went bad and when I injected it I transferred the bacteria from one ham to the next and that's why they all wasn't bad

 

[daveomak]

Check out this old time book...   What is says still holds true today...   They talk about killing, curing, referring, bone sour.....    everything we need to know....   I enjoy the read...   The old timers started all this and got all the bump worked out.....  

Dave

https://archive.org/stream/secretsofmeatcur05hell#page/8/mode/2up

 

[ddrian]

 
Check out this old time book...   What is says still holds true today...   They talk about killing, curing, referring, bone sour.....    everything we need to know....   I enjoy the read...   The old timers started all this and got all the bump worked out.....  

Dave

https://archive.org/stream/secretsofmeatcur05hell#page/8/mode/2up

Dave  Thanks for the link. That is amazing!

If you have more links please post them!

Awesome information.

DDR

 

[nate85]

Thanks for the link Dave, as always you been a help

 

[indaswamp]

Very cool link Dave, thanks for posting!