Brat second try(almost failuer)

[BC Buck]

Game plan was to make some brats after finished processing venison. What the heck, grinder is out and dirty. I bought a used #22 Wesson that came with many different tubes for filling but did not verify having correct diameter. I know you pros use a stuffer but I was going to do like how we fill are plastic ground meat bags. I ran butt through plat with 5/8" holes then mixed seasoning in and in freezer. Mistake #2 was I mixed 10% cheese in then realized the only stuff tube I had that would fit 30mm casing was about 1/2" dia. No big deal just take a little longer. Installed 7mm plate and 1/2" tube and ran meat till tube was full. Looking good, slipped casing on tube, grinder on and nothing. More meat, cheese and nothing. Dont know if cheese was culprit and or 1/2" tube, but throat of grinder was 2LB of sticky gooey mess that no amount of plunging was going to get to feed through. 20 LB of ruff ground, seasoned pork butt sitting there, and im in panic mode. Was able to get about 3' of casing on my next largest tube at a time and 1.5 hours later finished brats. Running cheese through 7mm plate pretty much turned brats yellow. Live and learn.

 

[SmokinEdge]

Stuffing with a grinder can be tricky, but you should use the stuffer plate or the kidney plate to stuff sausage, not a grinding plate.

 

[zwiller]

Live and learn.

Yep. Been there. Congrats on the tuition payment.

 

[tallbm]

Game plan was to make some brats after finished processing venison. What the heck, grinder is out and dirty. I bought a used #22 Wesson that came with many different tubes for filling but did not verify having correct diameter. I know you pros use a stuffer but I was going to do like how we fill are plastic ground meat bags. I ran butt through plat with 5/8" holes then mixed seasoning in and in freezer. Mistake #2 was I mixed 10% cheese in then realized the only stuff tube I had that would fit 30mm casing was about 1/2" dia. No big deal just take a little longer. Installed 7mm plate and 1/2" tube and ran meat till tube was full. Looking good, slipped casing on tube, grinder on and nothing. More meat, cheese and nothing. Dont know if cheese was culprit and or 1/2" tube, but throat of grinder was 2LB of sticky gooey mess that no amount of plunging was going to get to feed through. 20 LB of ruff ground, seasoned pork butt sitting there, and im in panic mode. Was able to get about 3' of casing on my next largest tube at a time and 1.5 hours later finished brats. Running cheese through 7mm plate pretty much turned brats yellow. Live and learn.

Yeah sucks. With this work it is definitely a case of "the right tool for the job".
A good and proper dedicated stuffer should solve all these problems.
Situations like yours are what drive us all to get one, that and easye, speed + efficiency :)

If you look into dedicated stuffers get one that stuffs more than what you normally do.

So if you generally do 5 pound batches of sausage get a stuffer that stuffs 7 pounds. Why? They hold about 1-2 pounds less than what they claim.
So if you buy a 5 pound stuffer and try to fill with 5 pounds that wont work and you will be stuffing in 2 batches. Not much of a problem on 5 pounds but when you start doing 15 pounds and more you just turned it into 4-6 stuffer loads and the number of stuffer loads just keeps increasing more as you do more sausage.

So again, right tool for the job to match the capacity you want to turn into sausage :)

Finally, the bigger the stuffer the more strength it takes to push all those pounds of meat through a little tube and can quickly turn into a 2 person job. 1 strong person to crank, 1 to feed casings and manage the meat... I deal with this just about every year after hunting is done hahaha :D