Homemade Sausage Making

I recently built a smokehouse in the backyard using a lot of information from this site and the corresponding book. It has internal dimensions of 7'W X 3'D X 6.5'H. I have used it 4-5 times now and the temperature control from my homemade propane pipe burner works perfectly. I can maintain any temp between 100 and 250F for hours at a time with only 1-2 degree variance. My issue is with smoke flavor permeating the meat.

I have been following the recipes from this site and others that recomend smoking the meat at 120F-130F for 1-2 hours to dry out the casings then crank up the smoke and the temp from 4-8 hours. It seems like there is a lot of smoke and I have tried to close the dampers down to less than 1/2 open. It does not seem to make much difference. The sausage comes out beautiful in color, but just does not have a l ot of smoke flavor or aroma.

My smoke generator is an old offset smoker that I piped into the house with approximately 10 feet of galvanized pipe. It comes out of the offset smoker in a 3" in diameter then necks up to 4" after 2 feet. I light a small fire with 10 or so charcoal briquettes then add hickory, pecan, apple, or oak chunks and small logs on every hour or two. It is not keeping a huge fire, but it is not just smoldering smoke either. Do you think I need to make the fire smolder more, or maybe do I need to increae the diameter of the pipe to increase flow into the smokehouse? I am at a loss, any suggestions would be appreciated.

Dan

The fewer flames you have the more smoke you will get. Can you closely control the air flow to the fire? You seem to be using quite a bit of wood. Try to avoid open flames on the wood. You may scatter the fire a little to cool it and get more smoke and less flame.

I guess I was thinking incorrectly that more wood would equal more smoke. I will try to make the fire smolder when we make venison sausage in a few weeks.

Does anyone here start smoking as soon as you put the sausage in the smoker at 120-130F? I thought maybe I should try starting a little earlier in the process as well?

Thanks for the tips. Keep them coming.

Dan

The surface must be dry and a pelicle well formed before smoke will adhere to the surface well. If you post a picture of your fire pit/box/place we will be able to tell you better what we think is the solution.

This is a fire that has unlimited air supply and no smoke.

ddude,
Have you tried moistening saw dust. I have used for many years dried kindling, chips etc but always covered the wood with damp sawdust.
Do control you air intake thouigh. Ross is correct, the more flame. the less smoke.
My friend, get some wet sawdust by that I mean NOT soaked in water and you'll be right.
Good Luck,
Jan.

This is a fire that has unlimited air supply and no smoke.

Ross, are you building campfires in your living room again? Holy smoke! I mean.... uh... Poor Nancy has to chase you with a yardstick!

ddude, an old trick I learned from Rytek Kutas was to use a stainless steel dish and almost fill it with dampened sawdust - But... dampened with a few sprays of "liquid smoke" (instead of water) from a spritzer. Before you fire it up, clear away a small center spot with your index finger, so the sawdust looks like a doughnut. This way, it will burn from two edges at the same time. You won't believe what the liquid smoke does to the sawdust. Turn up the heat on high until the wood sawdust starts to smolder, then turn the heat back down so the SMT is about 120°F.

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon

Most people here use sawdust or chips, a few of us are using chunks. When I use chunks they are first set on fire and then the air is choked off and they smoulder, eventually becoming charcoal. The charcoal has to be allowed to burn away for a little while before I add more wood. I cut the wood about 3 inches long and split it to about 2 or 3 inch chunks. I start the fire with smaller stuff and allow it a good start. My fire is about six feet from my smoke house.

I moved away from chips and have had great success with the a-maze-n smoker. There's no reason you can't have smoke generator and heat from separate units.