kyle I agree this is where I get away from all the BS in the world…I’ve had to unfollow some friends on Facebook nothing but political $hit

Made a few brats on the first day of the hopefully better new year…24 lbs pork butts with half Sheboygan bratwurst seasoning other half Lem bratwurst seasoning. Had a bit of carrot fiber left over so I threw that in with them. Ground through 3/8 then 3/16 plate and stuffed in natural 32-35 tubed casing. Turned out great

Hey fellow meatheads i never did introduce myself, I’m Jeremy from North Dakota. Been here for awhile just never really asked anything or posted anything till recently…I have a few posts on here. I love to read all the recipes/stories /and information… there’s a bunch. I been making sausage for probably 10 yrs just the usual sticks/jerky/brats/and ring sausage. If anyone has any info on a homemade propane smoker I’m all ears…I have one that I used a side burner off a grill…but it gets way to hot…it’s not insulated basically a 1/8 thick metal 2x2x4 box… I’ll post pics in a few days

I like the grey/black best but if that’s not a choice…gotta go team blue

MTArcher I smoke mine horizontal in my green mountain with the bull rack system…they stay round…I can get bout #10 or so only thing is I have to rotate the racks but it works for me

Tommie I just bought a inkbird ibt -4xp from Amazon I like it cause you can set a high and low temp alarm it has 4 probes 3 for meat and one for ambient I used one of the meat probes along with the ambient one to see if I had any differences in my temp and sure enough I did there’s a app for it I think it was around $50

chippewa we lost our thrust washer once, in a pinch we just made one outta a 5 gallon bucket lid…I think we still use it like that

JohninPa I don’t tie the ends I’ll just pinch how ever long I want my sticks to be…for me my sticks are probably 16-18 inches long so when I get that length I just pinch and cut with a scissors if that makes sense

I decided it was time for some summer sausage over the weekend made 12 lbs…
50/50 blend…of 90/10 burger and pork butts…made two batches 6lb with ECA and 6 without. Usually I like the ECA but this time I think the batch without is better. Smoked it in my pellet grill till the temp was at 140ish then finished with the water bath in a roaster ( the roaster is way easier to control temp IMO) Took 7-8 hrs from start of the smoking to the end 160° water bath…threw them in a ice bath and let them bloom a couple hrs before putting them in the fridge overnight and packaged them the next day… turned out pretty tasty

JoeB we only make sausage once a year so it makes sense for us to freeze what we don’t use up…we’ve been doing it that way for 15+ years works for us haven’t had issues…we never have unused casings for over a year and if we ever question the casings we’ll get new ones and toss the old ones

JoeB you mean still have the salt solution on them? Yes…also the ones that were in water we’ll put them in fresh water in a baggie so they’re submerged in water and freeze the whole baggie

We always freeze ours if we don’t use them all for that yr

JoeB no worries Joe, I’m no rookie, but don’t have near the yrs experience you do…always learning …happy stuffing