dry cure sausage questions...
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yep... Keep them wrapped in foil and in a cool dark place, otherwise they will go to hell....
Thanks for the tip dave...away from humidity too I would guess??? in a ziplock bag?
I found a sicilian salami recipe I gotta try....seasoned with sea salt, BP and lemon zest. pistachios added to the meat paste...
dernektambura
Smoking Fanatic
I wouldn't worry about ph.... in living animal meat ph is higher, once slaughtered it lowers down. essentially, ph is meat ability to retain water and by salting/curing and smoking/drying you are trying to withdraw meat water as much as you can.... in home making enviroment, you cant really control ph but you can speed up or slow down meat dehydration by controlling temperature and humidity values...
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Yes, the pH drops in post rigor meat, but not low enough to prevent pathogens. That's what the lactic acid bacteria are for...
The only controls you have as a home producer are ensuring your cultures are viable, ensuring a good environment for fermentation to occur, and checking the pH after fermentation.
dernektambura
Smoking Fanatic
Yes... Lactic acid bacteria is food preservative.. . cure #1 and #2 are also preservatives.... so, using lactic acid bacteria after you already cured meat with (for example) cure #2, beats a purpose of using cure #2 in first place...
Only if you are using bacteria cultures to lower the pH... Curing without bacteria culture does need the extra preservation of cure #2, for long term nitrate/nitrite conversion from the bacteria that's naturally occuring in the meat, to make the extra nitrite... or so it says in fine print somewhere...
It's amazing what folks can learn from this site... all the intracacies everyone adds to the conversations...
One thing folks learn, maybe, is that the rules can change with every change you make when curing...
If you add "this" then this will happen.... If you add "that" then that will happen.... By no means is this hobby "black and white"... There more grey than on my head....
Lactic acid alone will not produce a safe product. Clostridium botulinum bacteria can survive in a low acid environment...below pH 4.6...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/39257
Cure #1 or #2 must be used to neutralize Clostridium botulinum toxin production. The lactic acid environment prevents the growth of many other pathogens.
Sorry im late to the party.
The pH strips are good and save you some $, get both pH level paper.
Take a small chunk of your meat and clear wrap it to check the pH, then re wrap it. Why cut the ends of your casings to check pH.
Note: If you vac seal you pH strip containers they will last longer.
If pH meters are what your looking for then do some research as some are pretty expensive, dont forget the calibration liquids.
The pH strips are good and save you some $, get both pH level paper.
Take a small chunk of your meat and clear wrap it to check the pH, then re wrap it. Why cut the ends of your casings to check pH.
Note: If you vac seal you pH strip containers they will last longer.
If pH meters are what your looking for then do some research as some are pretty expensive, dont forget the calibration liquids.
I did find this:
Bactoferm™ B-LC-007
Bactoferm™ B-LC-007 is a patented culture blend capable of acidification as well as preventing growth of Listeria. The culture produces pediocin and bavaricin (think of them like a kind of "antibiotics") that keeps Listeria monocytogenes at safe levels by the additional hurdle thrown at it.
It is recommended to use this culture at low fermentation temperatures between 64-75°F for the production of European style products with very low acid profiles.
This culture makes T-SPX obsolete due to all the additional beneficial strains that come with it. You want the added yeast and both cocci strains for flavor development predominantly, and this blend has it all. Because the fermentation temperature is low as well we suggest this culture is a game changer by offering so much more than T-SPX. This blend offers added Listeria protection, where T-SPX does not. Both forms of cocci bacteria work together in developing the characteristic flavors of fermented sausages, while also reducing the residual amount of nitrite in your product due to their secretion of enzymes that cause the reduction of the residual nitrite in the sausage. So you end up consuming less in the final product than using a culture blend with these beneficial bacteria.
B-LC-007 is truly a superior culture to use for low temperature fermentation.
This blend contains:
Debaryomyces hansenii - a yeast which inhibits rancidity, is lipolytic, suppresses acidity (tang), and for flavor development
Lactobacillus sakei - produces lactic acid, produce bacterocins, and aids in the prevention of Listeria
Pediococcus Acidilactici - produces lactic acid, produce bacterocins, and aids in the prevention of Listeria
Pediococcus pentosaceus - is lactic acid producing, and proteolytic
Staphylococcus carnosus - develops flavor, improves color stability, proteolytic, lipolytic, tests positive for nitrate reductase activity
Staphylococcus xylosus - develops flavor, improves color stability, proteolytic, lipolytic, tests positive for nitrate reductase activity
Sold in a 50g bag which is enough to ferment 495# of meat.
Use 0.022% the weight of the meat. Meaning, measure your meat in grams, then multiply the weight of your meat by 0.00022. This number is the proper amount of culture to add to you meat.
To disperse evenly we recommend hydrating the culture for 25 minutes in 60 mL of distilled water. For every 5# of meat use 30mL of distilled water to hydrate and disperse the culture. It is best to add the culture when spiced meat is in chunks, mix around, then grind to desired particle size. Mix evenly after grinding.
Storage:
Always store your cultures below 1°F for a shelf life of 18 months. If stored above 41°F the shelf life is 6 weeks.
Bactoferm™ B-LC-007
Bactoferm™ B-LC-007 is a patented culture blend capable of acidification as well as preventing growth of Listeria. The culture produces pediocin and bavaricin (think of them like a kind of "antibiotics") that keeps Listeria monocytogenes at safe levels by the additional hurdle thrown at it.
It is recommended to use this culture at low fermentation temperatures between 64-75°F for the production of European style products with very low acid profiles.
This culture makes T-SPX obsolete due to all the additional beneficial strains that come with it. You want the added yeast and both cocci strains for flavor development predominantly, and this blend has it all. Because the fermentation temperature is low as well we suggest this culture is a game changer by offering so much more than T-SPX. This blend offers added Listeria protection, where T-SPX does not. Both forms of cocci bacteria work together in developing the characteristic flavors of fermented sausages, while also reducing the residual amount of nitrite in your product due to their secretion of enzymes that cause the reduction of the residual nitrite in the sausage. So you end up consuming less in the final product than using a culture blend with these beneficial bacteria.
B-LC-007 is truly a superior culture to use for low temperature fermentation.
This blend contains:
Debaryomyces hansenii - a yeast which inhibits rancidity, is lipolytic, suppresses acidity (tang), and for flavor development
Lactobacillus sakei - produces lactic acid, produce bacterocins, and aids in the prevention of Listeria
Pediococcus Acidilactici - produces lactic acid, produce bacterocins, and aids in the prevention of Listeria
Pediococcus pentosaceus - is lactic acid producing, and proteolytic
Staphylococcus carnosus - develops flavor, improves color stability, proteolytic, lipolytic, tests positive for nitrate reductase activity
Staphylococcus xylosus - develops flavor, improves color stability, proteolytic, lipolytic, tests positive for nitrate reductase activity
Sold in a 50g bag which is enough to ferment 495# of meat.
Use 0.022% the weight of the meat. Meaning, measure your meat in grams, then multiply the weight of your meat by 0.00022. This number is the proper amount of culture to add to you meat.
To disperse evenly we recommend hydrating the culture for 25 minutes in 60 mL of distilled water. For every 5# of meat use 30mL of distilled water to hydrate and disperse the culture. It is best to add the culture when spiced meat is in chunks, mix around, then grind to desired particle size. Mix evenly after grinding.
Storage:
Always store your cultures below 1°F for a shelf life of 18 months. If stored above 41°F the shelf life is 6 weeks.
Then..... when weighing the sausage to determine % weight loss..... Subtract the weight of the water you added with the bacteria culture, to get an ACCURATE weight loss....
Why? I do not follow your reasoning for this.
The way I see it; water is water and whether it is added or from the meat cells, it will have to be evaporated out of the meat to reach your target weight loss. If you add a 1/2 cup extra water, than an extra 1/2 cup of water need to be evaporated, not left in the meat paste.....otherwise, if your target is 30% weight loss from water evaporation, doing it the way you describe, you'll end up with less than a 30% weigh loss because that extra 1/2 cup of water is still in the meat.
Or am I looking at this wrong?????
I guess the question is:
Are you looking for a 30% weight loss of the finished salami or a 30% weight loss of the meat used to make the link? There would be a difference as to how it is calculated. I do not know being relatively new to dry curing salamis.
Saline_Smoker
Fire Starter
B-LC-007 is a good spring/fall culture here in MI. Perfectly matches the temp of our dining room (which is on a block foundation with a small crawl space from the rest of the slab house). Always a good ~5ºF cooler in there. The added Bactoferm 'safety junk' strains in there make it a really nice substitute for T-SPX, giving you an added level of assurance.
$0.02 of my experience (take it or leave it): if I'm flip-flopping to B-LC-007 from an FLC recipe; for B-LC-007 I just lower the dextrose/sucrose in the recipe a bit (~0.15-0.20%). In my experience, the hardier slow low temp B-LC-007 cultures seem to work a little longer on those sugars than the fast high temp FLC culture (likely just because of the extra cold smoking time on the salamis that is still in the fermentation temp range of the B-LC-007), so you may want to adjust your sugars depending on what you're doing (or account for your cold smoke time), otherwise you can end up with an overly acidic end product - though nothing outside of edible; just not consistent with a batch made with FLC at a higher temp another time of year. For example, my normal salami recipe has 0.5% dextrose, and 0.5% brown sugar (sucrose) in it when I use FLC in the summer months, so if I'm making them in the cooler months and using B-LC-007, I drop the dextrose and brown sugar to 0.30-0.35%.
$0.02 of my experience (take it or leave it): if I'm flip-flopping to B-LC-007 from an FLC recipe; for B-LC-007 I just lower the dextrose/sucrose in the recipe a bit (~0.15-0.20%). In my experience, the hardier slow low temp B-LC-007 cultures seem to work a little longer on those sugars than the fast high temp FLC culture (likely just because of the extra cold smoking time on the salamis that is still in the fermentation temp range of the B-LC-007), so you may want to adjust your sugars depending on what you're doing (or account for your cold smoke time), otherwise you can end up with an overly acidic end product - though nothing outside of edible; just not consistent with a batch made with FLC at a higher temp another time of year. For example, my normal salami recipe has 0.5% dextrose, and 0.5% brown sugar (sucrose) in it when I use FLC in the summer months, so if I'm making them in the cooler months and using B-LC-007, I drop the dextrose and brown sugar to 0.30-0.35%.
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Saline_Smoker
Fire Starter
I should note though, based off my reading of the bacteria strain/acidity production graphs from Chr. Hansen (the people who make pretty much all of these cultures), you likely won't want to drop your sugar levels any further than a minimum of 0.30%. Those bacteria guys do need something to work off of after all.
(That seems to be the lowest level they test in their labs, so best I can figure it's the floor you shouldn't bust through)
(That seems to be the lowest level they test in their labs, so best I can figure it's the floor you shouldn't bust through)
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