Kielbasa sausage

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NewBuilder

Smoke Blower
Original poster
SMF Premier Member
Jun 15, 2019
95
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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.
 

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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 :)
 
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tallbm tallbm has you covered. Not sure where you hail from but I love doing Polish sausage in the winter months as you can get a true cold smoke on them.

My last batch had some of the same issues you described. My casings never dried out properly as it was so humid. I tried making up for it with more heat to dry the sausages but ended up with sausages that were more like jerky. I also think I doomed myself by not having a high enough fat content.

A mistake that you learn from is the best kind of mistake to make.

Looking forward to your future posts and success!

JC :emoji_cat:
 
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I have a Little Chief and a Big Chief and their volume is too small for using a pellet tube with typical pellets. If you use crushed/ground pellets with a few bigger pieces mixed in your smoke will be much more gentle. You might give this set-up a try, lid blocked open (and some sort of weight on it), vent door open to improve draft. It's hard to see the smoke in this photo because it's right at sunrise, but it's there.
5MXNDES.jpg

This is my drum smoker, which is 43" tall, you can see I have the lid blocked open, and the amount of smoke I'm using.
WExKPF6.jpg

Here is a peek inside the drum to get a better feel of what smoker volume, with maximum draft can do.
Hv0Rsm7.jpg
 
We have a great community here!
The guys have covered the other parts of the sausage making process I didn't hit on, so be sure to look into those steps as well because I just summarized the "cooking" part of the process and left out a ton of other stuff that is important hahaha.

In short the entire sausage process is summarized as:

  • Prep natural castings
    • Rinse natural casings of salt (flush salt form inside if u can but dont fuss too much)
    • Best to put them in water and set in the fridge for at least 5-7 days before using so they be come super pliable and user friendly, u can switch water out if needed but i just roll with
    • NON-Natural casings - often do need this level of prep, if they need any at all. Summer sausage casings just need to soak shortly before using, cellulose no prep at all, etc. etc.
  • Prep grinder if grinding by putting parts that touch meat in freezer for a while to get cold
    • Many people have grinders that heat up a bit so this helps them. I'm lucky and my grinder parts don't heat up at all and stay as cold as the meat I run through it. Your experience may vary :)
  • Grind or buy meat in proper meat to fat ratio for sausage making (I like 80/20 meat to fat, others do 70/30, etc. etc.)
  • Season the meat
    • if doing smoked sausage add proper amount of cure #1
    • if doing fresh sausage (NOT slow smoked sausage) no need for cure #1
  • Stuff the meat
    • or bag the meat if loose ground sausage for patties or browned ground sausage dishes
  • Smoke the cured sausage per the steps I provided earlier
  • Ice Bath the sausage - Immediately pull and Ice Bath the sausage when it is done to cool it down and stop casing shrinkage
    • Have a tub or sink loaded with cold ice water and throw sausage in it to cool it down fast. Some guys in snow states throw the sausage into a fresh snowbank hahaha.
  • Bloom sausage
    • Dry off sausage after ice bath and hang or rest sausage at room temp for a few hours so color can develop
  • Eat sausage and/or vac seal and store (self explanatory)
That is the whole process
 
I did a second batch using the info you guys provided. Darn, they are good! It is now snowing in Edmonton, AB, and getting cold. I might have to wait until spring to start up again.
 

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I did a second batch using the info you guys provided. Darn, they are good! It is now snowing in Edmonton, AB, and getting cold. I might have to wait until spring to start up again.

Wow those look amazing!

So you took the same meat and just followed our info on the process and the same meat turned out amazing vs the 1st batch? or did you mix and make a new second batch?
 
Wow those look amazing!

So you took the same meat and just followed our info on the process and the same meat turned out amazing vs the 1st batch? or did you mix and make a new second batch?
I made a new batch basically following your instructions. I can't thank you and many others from this site enough.
 
I did a second batch using the info you guys provided. Darn, they are good! It is now snowing in Edmonton, AB, and getting cold. I might have to wait until spring to start up again.
Hi newbuilder! I'm in Winnipeg and smoke all winter long. Having a garage is a big help though.
 
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So, you're saying 5 hours to smoke the sausage. I know this is a completely newbie question but how much/little wood do you use during this time to avoid getting too much smoky flavor?

I'm still waiting on my propane smoker to show up, but I can imagine too much wood in any type of smoker will lead to NewBuilder's first go around make it hard to swallow.

Now, since I don't want to go too smoky (mainly for the wife to be happy with it also), is there anything wrong with having the smoke during the first half of smoking and then just finishing off with the stepping up of temps without smoke? Or is it better to just feed a single chunk of wood (for very little smoke) at a time during the entire time smoking?

Learning a lot from the forum! Thanks guys!
 
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So, you're saying 5 hours to smoke the sausage. I know this is a completely newbie question but how much/little wood do you use during this time to avoid getting too much smoky flavor?

I'm still waiting on my propane smoker to show up, but I can imagine too much wood in any type of smoker will lead to NewBuilder's first go around make it hard to swallow.

Now, since I don't want to go too smoky (mainly for the wife to be happy with it also), is there anything wrong with having the smoke during the first half of smoking and then just finishing off with the stepping up of temps without smoke? Or is it better to just feed a single chunk of wood (for very little smoke) at a time during the entire time smoking?

Learning a lot from the forum! Thanks guys!

When I smoke sausages, I use a very small amount of wood. I want a bit of smokiness on the sausage without it being overpowering. Doing about 20 lbs of sausage in my charcoal smoker, I use about 4 wood chunks for the whole smoke.

JC :emoji_cat:
 
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It ain't about How Long you add Smoke...It all about the QUALITY of the Smoke!
You are wanting TBS, Thin Blue Smoke. This is when the wood added is smoldering at a high enough temp that nasty tasting Creosote and other component burn up and only Sweet Smoke is flavoring the meat. When adding Wood to a Small Hot Fire, smoke starts out White,BAD, thins out to Gray, GOOD, then goes Blue, BEST!
Stick Burners can't Turn Off the Smoke so the whole time the meat is in the Smoker it is getting smoke and that smoke needs to be the Best it can be. TBS it take a little practice and learning your smoker to get there...JJ
 
This is awesome info! Had no idea before what to watch for.

The last time I was smoking, I actually had the blue smoke and my wife came out (even more novice than I am) and said "That's not smoking. I don't see any smoke."

I keep learning here on this site. Awesome guys, really!
 
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