Sausage Makin' - better late than never!

Usually my brother & I get together in Jan or Feb & pool all of our deer trim & make sausage. The cooler weather makes for better smoking. This year "life got in the way" for both of us so I finally just did it myself this week. It was only 65 rings of which most will now begin the drying process!



BTW, a new trick I learned. I always hate that I can't get that last bit of meat out of the grinder or stuffer. We don't eat the heel-slice of bread around my house, so at the end, I put a few slices in the grinder to push that last bit of meat out. Same with the stuffer.

Since I graduated we have always made sausage late lol. Good window unit I. The smokehouse helps out.

Looking good.

It is looking good!

Nice.

Looks awesome.

I really like your smoker. What are your design measurements for the top part?
We processed 8 deer in the garage this year and need to build a smoker. Trying to cold smoke on an offset brisket smoker proved very time consuming.

We like to use rice if we don't have bread to purge the grinder at the end. It reminds me of the old style boudin we had as kids. We had axis kielbasa in our Święconka this year!

The smoker is 48" tall by 36" wide by 27" deep & has 3 shelf lips starting at the very top. It will hold 200 rings not touching each other. I built it when I was a teenager & over the years it has smoked literally 1,000's of deer sausages. It gets patched up every so often but it just seems like it get low priority as far as revamp projects go.

Do you keep the door to that building locked?

I like hang down.

YES, with an alarm on at night!!

BTW, does insurance cover deer sausage?

Awesome !

My desire -

Yeah Hud, me too....
Maybe some day before I'm too old to hunt.

Awesome job fellas, sausage look fantastic!
Both smoke houses are unique would love to start doing this myself.
Keep up the great work, and thanks for taking the time to post the pictures!

Yeah, neat smoker, what level of fire do you have under it?

great looking smokers!!! I wish I had a picture of the ones my dad/uncles/friends used to have before I had a true appreciation for the art/craft of sausage making.

When I was a kid, there was an ol' timer in the neighborhood that would go down to the trash behind the Hopp's Appliance store & scrounge up a refrigerator carton. He used it as a cold smoker for his sausage for a couple of days then either burned it up or took it back to the trash pile!

seen it done in a dishwasher carton. Made delicious sausage.

Very little. The key is smoke and not heat, hence the term cold smoke. I have personally witnessed one well known and highly regarded sausage maker use an old hub cap with smoldering embers.

That or a hotdog bun works well, and what little bread you get won't hurt a thing. Here's another trick I use now, simply because it's easy - grab a handful of ground product and run it through again (do that two times). When you open it up, all you have is ground, and you won’t always be looking for bread.