Tryed new this time was pas black bull injection. Real good!

Was a fun weekend of BBQ! We had a little catering event which included cooking 120 chicken leg quarters, 11 briskets, and 30 st louis pork ribs. Love that smell! Heres some pics!

Jonathon no problem! Btw i switched to waltons seasonings last year for a bunch of my stuff. I just switched over to using your ham spices as well. They work out pretty tasty!

beekeeper84 i feel your struggle!

@nancy321brown cash me outside how bout that

Joe Hell its the traeger com200. Does a pretty good job of cooking. Not as even as a rotissery style but it does ok. That one picture has 30 ribs and 11 briskets and still had plenty of room.

Jonathon we do not either. As it works out we end up with xtra meat (snack sticks/summer sausage/etc) that we just give back to the customer and they are xtra happy.

I think it depends more on process. For one i would not add 20% water unless you have a vacuum tumbler. Yea you can add water if you want but just put a dab in to help mix the seasoning. Too much water can drown out some of the cure while marinating. Did you smoke it or just dehydrate it? If you want it a nicer red color marinate it for 48+hours. Even a little erthorbate will burn it redder as well. If you smoked it then put heavier smoke on it a bit longer. Hickory gives great red color. If you just dehydrate it then its harder to get it real red. My jerky cook cycle is 200 degrees the entire cook cycle, i also use humidity for an undisclosed time so 170 isnt that bad.

I generally like to cook full packer briskets not just the flats. But if you cut the fat off, toss the fat in the smoker too! Its a delicious little snack or if its too much for people toss it in a stew!

I could see black bull being pretty tasty on most meats. I used prime briskets so they were plenty juicy but i think the phosphate helped a bit too!

Ive only dry cured hams years ago for experimental and personal use, I wet cure everything for my customers, dont have the time to mess with dry aging if i want to roll through animals. I know the amazing smoke tube works great for people as well as placing some ice cold water in your smoker to keep temps down. You can also smoke for 6-12 hours, let it rest about 12 hours and smoke again, rest, repeat depending on your smoke preference and color. Of course i use carmel coloring in my hams to help with the color. As jonathon said you dont need erthorbate for long cures like that as well.

I would for sure add dextrose and honestly corn syrup solids work great too for adding a touch of sweet and better preservative and color.

I will toss my 2 cents in here. 1st off yes you can use less seasoning and have a safe product just make sure you always use the proper amount of cure. Never skimp on the cure.
2nd off i think maybe a couple things here to help. Never use city or well water in your meat unless they go through a very nice filtering system. I would always suggest using distilled water in everything you do. And i do think this is what is causing your issue is contamination from water. What you can do is get a plate or small bowl and put a bunch of water in it, put that in the dehydrator until its all evaporated then look at whats left on your plate and you may be quite surprised to see whats there.
With that, its ok to have super duper lean meat with no fat and silver skin/sinew. But i would highly recommend possibly adding a small amount of beef fat to your jerky to make a better product. It will help hold seasoning, add flavor, and make it so its not too dry.
But i would highly recommend you doing the water dehydrator test to see your contaminants in your water.

cuddless just to help clear some confusion ive seen on this board. Pork shoulder and pork butts are the same cut of meat. Its off the shoulder of the hog similar to a square cut chuck on beef. But its called pork shoulder or pork butts and its the same thing. Actual hindquarters of hogs are generally just used for hams and would be way to lean to use for sausage by themselves.
This being said there are a lt of differences from farmers on hogs. Not all pork shoulders are the same and some of them have a bunch of moisture added to them to help charge you for water. You really have to make sure you get a great fatty pork shoulder to use for sausage or else you will need too add a little more fat or it will turn out crumbly. If your cooking it the way you are dont use any cure, its pointless and just adds something your body dont need anyways.
My two bits of nonsense

I generally do between 75 and 200lbs of snacks sticks at a time. Maybe couple times a month.

Todd Phillips no problem! Its a lesson i had to learn years ago too! I think one major thing a lot of people need to think about is when your adding different enhancers to meat, how is it going to affect cooking / drying / taste / etc. Once you break away from doing just your basic cure and dry seasonings things can change your output drastically. For a lot of people ive seen on this forum they get real excited about all the enhancers you can add to the meat and want to rush right in with them. Make sure if your adding something other then basic ingredients that you do the research on them because they will change how you do things to your meat and nobody wants to destroy their animal they hunted for or waste all that money on beef/pork because they missed a step. Please make sure if you dont fully understand how something works ask as many questions as you can about it so you have a real good feel good about it. The only stupid question is one not asked!

Ive used quite a few different style smokers over the years, and i have two pellet smokers i use for personal and catering. Since you used a pellet smoker and cooked/smoked those for 20 hours, i can almost guarrantee that is a smoke ring on that sausage and nothing to worry about. But i would change your cook cycle when using that pellet smoker. Like someone mentioned skip the 175 and go to 200 with as much humidity as you can get. Once your internal temp gets to around 138F your risk of fatting out greatly decreases so turn your smoker up to 200 around that time.

You can get the wet bulb temperature of your smoker using a wet towel over a thermometer with a cup of water soaking the towel, thats the easy part. Hard part is adding humidity to your smoker, theres tips on here to do that, but without a commercial smoker that smoke schedule you have is going to be VERY hard to do.

You guys got a great job! Im pretty passionate about this kinda stuff. I enjoy it a lot and love doing R and D stuff! Keep up the fun work!