Guys, A newer sausage-maker reached out to me about a month ago with some questions because he is having issues with his homemade fresh sausage, he has not gotten into smoked sausage yet. In a nutshell, his product turns out dry and mealy and lacks flavor. He's using ground pork butt with no additional fat, and using a Kitchen Aid grinder. The pork is pre-chilled cubes before grinding, and the meat is kept cold through stuffing. I noticed in our email of today he mentioned grinding, seasoning and immediately stuffing (which I don't do until the next day) into hog casings., so this could be a factor as often my sausage absorbs all the liquid and I wet it again before stuffing. I keep my gut really wet too adding still more water. The worst thing is, this happens for all the recipes he has tried. The photos above were the most recent batch, the recipe is Bigwheel's Texas Hot Links ( a 7# recipe calls for a whole bottle of beer) which I've made for years with great results.
I have visited with him about not over-working the meat, the importance of an icy liquid, how fresh ingredients can add moisture, not ramping up the pit temp too fast or to high so the fats and proteins don't break (but again this issue is happening on both grilled links and links that are simmered and grill finished. My last discussion was about binders like powdered milk, but he has not tried that yet. I'm kind of stumped and out of suggestions. We have not visited about adding more fatty trim, but pork butt has been very adequate for me since I stopped adding trim at least 20 years ago (however some store bought links can be 40%+ fat). Can anyone offer some help here?