Jonathon I got through my pack of beef bacon and opened the turkey. I think the flavor was better. Definitely leaner. It definitely has a different texture than the beef. I didn’t do pork, but now have something else to make.

I am looking for a good quality meat grinder to process a few deer a year and maybe an antelope every so often. I also plan to make other meat products like my own sausage, brats etc. I have done a bunch of research and have settled on either the weston bucher series, weston professional or the LEM all #12 size. All are 3/4hp other than the weston pro which has 1hp. Best I can tell is all are similar and all have 5yr. warranty. The LEM claim to fame is the big bite auger, but I am not sure about its actual functionality. The weston seem to come with more attachments and high speed auger. I also like they are sold by Waltons a couple hours away from me and if I ever need parts or help they will be there to help. Any recommendations based on experience or ideas?

So I am going to make a batch of snack sticks and summer sausage . I don’t have a regular smoker. I only have a wood pellet grill/smoker to smoke the product on. It only has a smoke setting usually runs around 160 and then the next setting is 225. I know both of your recipients state to start low and stage up. Do you think starting on smoke and then going up to 225 to finish would be ok? Or should I partially open the door to regulate the temp for the first few hours?

Jonathon Good news. I fired up my T pellet grill and messed with it on the smoke setting. I can adjust the P-setting which controls the off time of the auger. I got it to run at 125 and should still have enough adjustment with the p setting to bump up the temp prior to hitting 225 setting (if needed). I am using encapsulated citric acid so thanks for the advice. I didn’t know that.

Jonathon So this may seem like a really dumb question, but how do you hang the meat in the smoker. I assume I just loop over the smoke stick and then make one big continuous loop across the stick alternating up across and down from side to side over the smoke stick until I get it all on there? I assume if I cut prior to cooking my 30% fat to meat ratio would mean it would heat up to melt the pork fat and I would have meat running out of casings to the bottom of my smoker.