why are my sausages drying soooo fast?

[davidk]

Hi guys,

I'm in a need of your advice again.

My curing box is working fine now and I do have a good control of its humidity. I tried to dry cure something smaller simpler first – 2kg batch of sausages in hog casings with diameter of around 28mm. I'm following a recipe from the book of Marianski brothers – Home Production of Meats and Sausages. The recipe asks for Cure 2, T-SPX culture, 3 days of fermentation and drying for 2 months.

My problem is that my sausages are drying at extremely rapid speed – I can see weight loss of several percent each day:

sausages.jpg

• davidk
• Nov 13, 2014

1st day – 801g

...

4th[sup][/sup]day – 682g / 14%

5th day – 629g / 21%

6th day – 586g / 26%

...

9th day – 489g / 38%

...

13th day – 403g / 49%

which of course resulted into case hardening as can be seen from the photo. What am I doing wrong?

I sticked with the recommended humidity of 90-85% for the fermention stage and dropped it to 85-80% after first three days. Just for the record: I open my curing box (small fridge) once a day; I have a fan in the fridge which runs whenever fridge cooling cycle is on - few times an hours for few minutes.

Should I just try it again and keep humidity way higher? let say 5% higher? Would a more frequent air movement made any difference?

The only good thing I can say about the sausages is that they developed strong healthy looking white mold all over quite quickly.

Thanks for any ideas!

-David

 

[chef jimmyj]

Sounds like you are doing everything right. I would get a cheap Hygrometer and verify the humidity is in fact accurate. That salami looks a lot like it has been curing near or below 70%...JJ

 

[daveomak]

Morning David..... 2 factors in moisture loss....... Humidity and air movement/speed...... If your humidity is spot on, then I would cut down on the fan some how.... maybe cover most of it with aluminum foil.... that would reduce the amount of air being circulated and it's speed...

Bump the humidity back up to 90% if you can.... Maybe that will rehydrate some of the case hardening.....

I don't know squat about fermenting meats.... Just what I read....


Dave

 

[davidk]

Thanks guys, I'm quite sure my humidity readings should be OK - I've got a brand new humidistat and I kept wired in the old one just for comparison. And I now understand the problem I had with my old humidistat - its readings are correct but it is very slow in updating (it is usually several minutes behind the newer humidistat during de/humidification phase).

I can lower the fan speed too.

I'm thinking about doing another experiment - a single salami (5cm/2inch in diameter) and lower the fan speed and change calibration of my humidistats by -5%.

Thanks for the tips,

-David

 

[DanMcG]

Can you eliminate the fan altogether? Opening the door once or twice a day is enough air movement