So, I followed the directions to what I thought were a ‘T’, ingredients ( I did sub out for carrot fiber vs the Sure Gel), temperature schedule, the whole thing. Using 80% venison, 20% pork fat a couple of things happened. First, There was a lot of fat rendering, and that led to some loss of volume. I was kind of surprised, the sausage was not adhering to the casing. Second, was the water intrusion during the ice bath. I actually used bagged ice because I had an issue the last time when I made meat sticks, they were waterlogged. So, I put everything in an ice cube bath (no water), for 10 minutes or so, and when it was said and done, I had what I could only call a substantial amount of water inside the casing. The water would have come from the ice melting of course. I hung the sausages from a dowel in my refrigerator for a few days, hoping they would dry out some. I think they have that this point, and the casing seems to have shrunk now, but I am not sure if the sausage has adhered now. Overall the taste is good, consistency is about right, the ECA is a little over powering to me, I would skip that and just let them rest overnight.

Next ice bath gets some sort of a bag or something in between the product and the ice. Waterlogged twice now and mildly infuriated.

Is losing all that fat normal? My final casings looked nothing like the pictures in the recipe.

So, I’ve done two things. I plumbed a hot plate from a card board box with dryer ducts, into a cooler with ice, then into another box that had cheese in it. I used a muffin fan to draw the air into the cheese box. It cooled the air, and I did not notice any condensation. It was OK, not great, but it worked given with what I was working with. Now I use an A-Maze-n pellet smoke generator inside my weber grill when I want to cold smoke. My cabinet smoker is too airtight to support the smoldering pellets, although once I ran an air tube from an old aquarium pump I had laying around, and that kept things going. Now if I want to cold smoke, I just bust out the pellet smoke generator and toss it in the weber. For cheese, I like it to be below 60F for ambient air, but I don’t think the smoker generator ever raises the air temp more than a few degrees, if any. However, I do make sure I don’t have anything food products directly over the smoke generator.