Homemade Sausage Making

Hello all,
For those that have added wine to their small casing dry cured sausages, I have a few questions.

How does wine affect the outcome, process, and results? Obviously wine is a liquid and adding too much would defeat the idea of a dry cured sausage. How much is enough, too little, and not enough.

Does Stan go over wine In his dry sausage book? If so can anyone point me in the right direction?

Thank you

Nick-
There is some info here: http://www.wedlinydomowe.pl/en/viewtopic.php?t=7283

Basicly a little goes a long way. Alcohol can denature proteins and the sausage will not bind and become crumbley.

Thank you bob. I will have too do some research and figure out how much per kg. seems like less sugar is better with wine. Will have to keep that in mind. Makes sense.

I almost always add wine (my home made plonk) to Italian style salami. After a bit of experimentation with amounts, I use 25ml (1oz) per kilo of meat. Using more can affect the binding and the goal is to reduce water activity as fast as possible and dry the sausage. I don't believe any of Marianski's dry cured recipes list wine as an ingredient.

Thanks redzed,
Have you noticed a problem with the sugar in the wine? Do you adjust your sugar levels accordingly? Or do you just stick with your normal sugar amounts per recipe and add the wine on top of that?
Thanks

I use dry red wine which obviously still has some sugar content but it's probably minimal. So I don't adjust. I also rationalize that the alcohol might retard bacteria growth, so the sugar is still necessary.

I would also add that the Ph of wine is in the 3 to 4 range which would offset any increase in sugar content

But we are starting to split hairs here..........
Best bet is to fine tune a recipe after trying it!!!