Homemade Sausage Making

I gave some smoked summer sausage to a friend of mine back at Christmas. I guess with all the foods everyone gets during the holidays he forgot about it and left it in the fridge for four months after which time he ate it and complimented me on the sausage. I told him I wasn't sure if he should have eaten it being that old but he said it smelled fine and tasted great. This of course got me to wondering, just how long can a vacuum sealed cured smoked sausage keep in a refrigerator?

I can think of three factors that are most important. Moisture content. storage temperature and the finishing temperature when it was smoked. Care in post smoking handling would be very important.

It just occurred to me that if this was a true , fermented summer sausage that it would keep without refrigeration well into the summer for feeding people in the fields while they were working. That was the source of the name.

In the summer sausage it was hot smoked at 170F till the internal temp was 155F. Cooled in ice water, hung to dry in fridge then vacuum sealed. Can't say what moisture content is. I suspect the storage temp would have been around 40F

The internal temp reaching over 138ᵒF. will have destroyed trichinella spiralis and the sodium nitrate (reduction to nitric oxide) will have destroyed clostridium botulinum (as well as the Aw reduction to less than 0.91). The prep temp of 152ᵒF will have destroyed other pathogens including salmonella, e.coli, listeria, monocytogenes, bacilli, and campylobacter.
The Aw of less than 0.86 will have destroyed most other pathogenic bacteria including the campylobacters, e.coli, shigella, listeria, and even the staphylococcus (aureus) spp. et al.
In making the summer sausage, if you used a Bactoferm culture, the lactobacilli or pediococci will have increased the acidification profile to 4.8 or more, further protecting against pathogenic microorganisms.

ButterbeanO, your question was:

...just how long can a vacuum sealed cured smoked sausage keep in a refrigerator?

Although the sausage was vacuum-sealed, I wouldn`t count on that detail to provide a obligate anaerobic atmosphere. However, with the acidic content and moisture loss, the sausage should be fine as long as there is no indication of newly introduced bacterial contamination, especially the pseudomonas or brocotrix thermophacta spoilage-type microorganisms. Your friend should be aware that the smell is not always an indicator of decomposition and spoilage.
In other words, shucks pard... it should be safe but there are never any hundred per-cent guarantees! I`d go for it.

Best Wishes,
Chuckwagon

You could end up with four `fridges' one to ferment one to cure one to store and another one for the kitchen and oh yes one to keeping the wine or and beer. That is a whole load of fridges and one very happy utility company. So after a sausage or ham etc be vac packed and stored in the household fridge. The vac pack would hold the humidity and why would the temperature matter?

How do you people get around this?

The vac pack would hold the humidity and why would the temperature matter?

It's because (vac-packed or not), new bacteria start to multiply above a certain temperature.
(A vacuum machine can never remove all the oxygen).

Storing it in the fridge for so long is definitely risky, especially since the sausage was not pasteurized after being vacuum packed.
Yersinia enterocolitica and Listeria monocytogenes are capable of multiplying at 29.3°F
Yersinia enterocolitica can multiply at a pH as low as 4.0, Listeria monocytogenes at a pH as low as 4.1

So without expensive testing how long is the shelf life of vac packed cooked sausages (if I am not using them within 5 days I freeze them?

I freeze them too but I can't control what others do with them once they get them. Personally, I don't think I would have eaten the summer sausage but he did and he said it was fine.

How would you go about pasteurizing a sausage that is vac packed? Steep in water? What would this do the quality and texture?