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bonedrake

Newbie
Original poster
Nov 1, 2016
14
10
Ohio
Hello everyone. Just wanted to introduce myself. I'm from Ohio and have been smoking meats for about 4 years now. I first got started after a friend of mine built a UDS and I was so impressed I had to build one myself! After that I just couldn't stop! Mostly ribs,chicken and pulled pork. We butcher a hog every year so I have played around with curing some ham and bacon also. I've done some summer sausage with ok results. I recently purchased an electric smoker(Chard brand) and have been using that to tinker with the cured meats. Anyway that's probably what brought me here. I had a major fail recently with a 10lb batch of summer sausage that had a complete fat out and I'm really confused on why. This batch was fermented using FLC culture for 24 hr at 90° and approximately 80% humidity. Dried in the smoker at 120° for two hr. Then bump to 135° with smoke for 3 hr. Temp stayed at between 128°-139° for the next 15 hr. That's a total of 20 hr in the smoker. Took the sticks out and temp them they were all right around 120° . went into a hot water bath set at 170° for about 45 min to bring temp up to 152-155° and when I pulled the probe out it was like a waterfall of liquid that came out. Not the thick greasy fat you normally see with a little fat out,this was almost like water. Every one of them did the same thing. I used three different thermometers and they all read the same. I just don't see why or how this could happen with the steps I took. I should say that this was an all beef sausage and the beef I used was from a half we bought about 6 months ago. I had a ton of ground reef left in the freezer so I figured I would just do a batch of summer sausage. Never done all beef. This is the only thing I can think of as to why this happend. Does beef fat render at low temps? Was it the type of fat that's in the ground beef? Could have come from anywhere on the side of beef. And it looks like it's about 70/30 and I figure that should be about perfect for a summer sausage. Anyway maybe someone has an answer or had this same problem.
 
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