Jonathon makes sense on the cure accelerator and going straight to stuffing, thanks.

I’m not exactly sure how much water I was adding, I only know that I added what I thought was a lot of water, had trouble, added more, to then getting blasted in the face with meat and water once the seal broke. Haha, it was quite the sight to see. And yes, I tried different setups with the seal thinking I might have it wrong but it blew out no matter how I tried it.

As for fat content, we used 50% beef(brisket) and 50% venison.

Harkness Awesome design, that’s impressive.

Jonathon the stuffing tube doesn’t have a label but I think it’s an un-tapered 12mm. I don’t think anything was blocking the end because it happened too many times. However, I did some closer inspection last night and the seal does have a little nick in it, not sure if this happened before our struggle or during our struggle but I’d suspect that could be a big reason as well.

Some very good points and ideas on here, thanks everyone. Now it’s decision time for me, fix “cheap” stuffer, improve cast iron stuffer as shown above, or buy one of the stuffers on this website. I must admit, the smooth elbow at the bottom, having 2 different crank speeds, etc. seem like a big advantage. From what I’ve read and seen online, they also look very well built.

Ridley Acres

Not manual defrost but also seems far enough away from there to be thawing/freezing so much. But that’s a good point.

Sounds like I should give it a whirl with the stuffer. Thanks

Planning to make some venison / pork sausage and smoke it but had a couple questions:

1. Finding pure pork fat has been harder so I was going to use pork butt instead, what’s a good ratio for pork butt and venison? Most of what I read suggested 50/50 for using pork butt (not pure pork fat) but I want to make sure it won’t be too dry and still has good flavor.

2. Any suggestions on seasonings? I’ve always purchased seasonings from amazon from various manufactures and never been impressed. I’d like to give some stuff from Walton’s website a try. Our typical taste is something with a little heat (not overbearing), and like almost all warm blooded humans, we like the taste of garlic. Any suggestions? I was thinking the roasted garlic seasoning but the cajun seasoning also caught my eye.

The last couple of batches of things we’ve made I’ve noticed that we’re producing a lot of heat with the meat grinder once we get to the 2nd grind. Even to the point where it will start steaming / cooking where you can smell cooked meat and when you pull everything apart to clean the auger and grinding plates, there’s cooked meat stuck to the auger.

Here’s what we’re doing: we’re putting all grinder plates, auger, neck, etc. in the freezer several hours before starting, meat is pulled directly from fridge and actually partial frozen at first grind and immediately placed in freezer until it’s time for 2nd grind, we’re oiling the grinder plates / blades before 1st and 2nd grind, and I’m finishing the 1st grind with an ice cube or two to push the last parts of meat out.

This last time, I tried placing an ice cube through the grinder every few mins or so, which helped, but certainly didn’t cure it.

Part of me says, it’s metal on metal, constantly moving parts, of course it’s going to produce heat, but is there anything else we should be trying to do to reduce the heat? Obviously it doesn’t help that the 2nd grind takes much longer than the 1st grind but I don’t exactly like the idea of smelling cooked meats while I grind raw meat.