Made Kielbasa for the first time. I'm new to sausage making and have never tried to make smoked sausage. I was given a Little Chief and wanted to try it. I used a smoke pellet tube and filled it twice. The sausage turned out terrible - I didn't let the them dry and smoked them too long for my liking. I poached the other 1/3 and they were pretty good. The next day I used my Yoder 480 set to 160 turning up the heat to 225 for the last little bit. I set them on the top rack and they turned out very good.
Hi there and welcome!
We all live and learn :)
That sounds like way too much smoke for sausage to me so which you confirmed for us hahaha.
Also the "cooking part" of the sausage smoking process is as follows to avoid melting the fat out:
-Start 1hr at 100F smoker temp
-Bump up to like 120F smoker temp for an hour
-Bump up to like 140F smoker temp for an hour
-Bump up to like 160F smoker temp for an hour
-Bump up to 165-170F smoker temp for the rest of the smoke
-Go until sausage Internal Temp (IT) is like 152F-155F provided this is farm raised/store bought pork. If wild pork u want to bump up smoker temp to 180F and take internal temp to 165F to kill the micro nasties.
This process makes sure you bring up the temp slowly without shocking the fat and rendering it out. Some people jump up on smaller increments and just bump it up more times, i find his works for me in my electric smoker that controls temp super tight, with in 1 degree of my set temp.
Depending on the sausage you may add smoke for 30-45 minutes (franks/hotdogs/bologna), or you may add for a few hours. I think my limit on sausage is about 3 hours or so where summer sausage can go for longer but not linked sausage for me. Also i never go 100% hickory as it makes everything taste like bacon so I go no more than about 65% hickory if I got that high at all. My favorite sausage smoke blend is 70% Apple, 30% Hickory.
I hope this helps :)