Annual sausage making with my mom's family in Wall. We will smoke this link sausage and then we will stuff the dried sausage tomorrow and smoke it a few times over the next few days.

Will update with pics of dried after we stuff it.

That is super cool! What's the backstory on this?

Just something we do every winter. There is a recipe written in the smokehouse my great grandfather wrote for every 25# made.

We all just adjust what our families like from the base seasoning our family has had for years and years. Some people add jalapeños and cheese, some people cut back on red pepper. Mainly just whatever your family likes.

I always enjoy these posts.

Very nice, wear some lace up boots for support. That's gonna be a full day depending on how many hands show up.

I help a friend make dried about every other year. He has always tied and hung the links with string. The worst part is tying the links.
Does hanging directly on the wood rod affect the drying consistency? I always suggest that method but he is set in his ways.

I need to learn about this I doubt i still have your number but I will get it later this week

Awesome family tradition. Looks amazing.

All deer killed by the family? Do you buy pork to mix it with? I process my own deer except for sausage. I haven't taken the effort and time to learn that yet but I would like to.

Link sausage is 70/30 pork to deer if you have deer meat to use, some just use pure pork if they don't deer hunt. Dried sausage is 50/50 pork to deer.

DG96 said:

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I help a friend make dried about every other year. He has always tied and hung the links with string. The worst part is tying the links.
Does hanging directly on the wood rod affect the drying consistency? I always suggest that method but he is set in his ways.

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Used to tie strings on the sausage we smoked, it's a time consuming pain. We used wooden rods and would roll the links slightly 1/2 way through the smoking process. This would prevent there from being a "green" spot where meat didn't get smoke. I'd need someone to comment who uses metal rods or metal rack as I haven't noticed nor been told if that's necessary . . . some of the sausage I've got from others has single spot in middle of link where it was hung w/o a string and what appears like for the duration of the smoking process. I've not seen an issue/problem with any of that sausage other than cook mark or "dent" in the link where it had been hung. My assumption is that metal conducts the low heat you smoke with and it isn't necessary to roll it as a result?

DG96 said:

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I help a friend make dried about every other year. He has always tied and hung the links with string. The worst part is tying the links.
Does hanging directly on the wood rod affect the drying consistency? I always suggest that method but he is set in his ways.

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Hasn't ever affected ours. This is the way we have always done it. Never messed with tying them, we just cut the casing and then pinch it together and it stays like that without any of the meat ever falling out. Works for us at least.

Looks cool. We need more pics of this smoke house.

Dumb question, what is dried sausage? I guess I thought all sausage was raw ground meat and spices.

What are the blue tags for? Does that separate batches with different spice mixtures?

And how many people help out on this? We make around 300# at a time which is a lot of work for 6-8 people.

That's a lot of sausage.

Does your family eat sausage for every meal or do you sell some?

My mom's family is huge. There were 5 kids. All of her and her brothers have kids with their own families. It's split up between probably 20 households by the time it's all said and done.

We probably eat more than the average family though, but not for every meal.

The blue tags separate everyone's batches to keep it all straight on who has what. I do half of mine made into jalapeño/cheese and half regular. Just mainly separates everyone's stuff and we have the persons name and amount of lbs written on each card.

Dried sausage is sausage with extra spices and curing salt mixed in and then ran really thin in the casing. We hang it and smoke it a couple times and keep it cold as we can in the smoke house with ac's and oscillating fans running constantly moving air around in the butcher shed/smokehouse to make it dry back to almost a jerky. The key is keeping moisture out of the shed to prevent any sort of mold growth.

In my time making sausage for the last 35 years we have had to throw out two batches because of warm weather and mold. It's a sad year to go without dried sausage when you're used to having it in hand at all times.

44mAG said:

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All deer killed by the family? Do you buy pork to mix it with? I process my own deer except for sausage. I haven't taken the effort and time to learn that yet but I would like to.

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I use 50/40/10 Venison, pork, fat. That makes an 80/20 sausage which is still somewhat lean by sausage standards. (Normal store bought is 70/30). You should definitely try it.

Looks good! Am curious, do you use a cold smoke process or hot smoke? If the latter, at what temp do you pull the sausage? I have recently switched over from the hot to cold smoke process and belief I like it better, especially when the sausage is frozen for a while before eating.

Do you ever change up the recipe for your family. I find that if I eat the same recipe for a couple of years straight I tend to get burned out on it. I will also change it up sometime and will include chopped green onions and will not smoke it, just put it up "green". This is usually for cooking on the grill.

Beautiful.

Nice!

We have always cold smoked everything. We usually use hickory but this year we are using pecan bc we didn't get our Colorado County relatives to bring us any. We soak the logs for a few days then throw them on a bed of coals way far away from the sausage and then cover it up with tin. It's never cooked any of the sausage at all.

That is a super cool tradition.

250# of dried stuffed and hung up. Ready for smoke. Have 20 lbs of Sandhill crane/pork dried sausage we are trying for the first time.

Pic of smoke source relative to links please. Cool stuff!

Get a bed of coals built about a foot deep. Throw soaked logs into coals. Cover with tin. Drag inside door just far enough to close it.

We are in the process of making a bunch of dried sausage this year. I hope it makes it, because for the two weeks it's been hanging, 8-10 of those days have been 100% humidity and have grown some mold. Hopefully next week it finishes.

It was a little foggy yesterday but it burnt off and wasn't bad today. Not sure on percent humidity but it's plenty dry, we are more worried about heat and spoiling meat but we should be good with three window units. Forecasted highs in the 60s the next week.

We just hung all of our sausage to smoke this evening. Will smoke it all evening and then leave it in the smoker overnight, then will smoke the sausage again in the morning that we want as dried sausage.

Sausage party, huh? Username checks out…

By "really thin" you mean you don't fill the casing completely?

How long do you let them dry out?

Dirty-8-thirty Ag said:

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It was a little foggy yesterday but it burnt off and wasn't bad today. Not sure on percent humidity but it's plenty dry, we are more worried about heat and spoiling meat but we should be good with three window units. Forecasted highs in the 60s the next week.

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Good bull, I know of a lot of folks from around Wall. I spent a little over 10 years in Angelo and I love that town. All great people, thanks for sharing this with us

We used a white vinegar rag and wiped down the outside of our dried sausage if it started to show any issues. I was a kid and didn't know why, it was not for spoil it was for stuff that gets on the outside casing. I remember it hanging for months after it was smoked and dried for a week or so. Loved that stuff, would have it in my backpack every time I went somewhere.