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Interesting point Jim. I do not yet brew in the kitchen yet, I do ferment in there. I have never completed a meat project on the same day as a brew session. Additionally, I get pretty wild with the star san spray bottle on both meat days and brew days. I really don’t see how I would easily get a cross contamination the brews are fermented inside a chest freezer with the air lock. The chambers I do ferment my meats in is located in my basement, but in another room. It is an interesting point but I also think of it being akin to people doing partial mashes in their kitchens.
Don’t worry Jim, there will be treats to share with the boys the next time we meet up.
For those of you that get down with the Joe Rogan this podcast is amazing, making my way though it now. Party On Wayne!
As you will all see the update I just sent out. Hopefully I am not raining on the whole parade. The decision was not lightly made. We do have many members of the club that hit the demographics of individuals that should be on high alert.
Ultimately, we are sharing drinks in close proximity and the potential for cross contamination is particularly high. Also being that I have elected for my profession to work in a cesspool of germs and children, I do know that I am a potential high risk carrier for these sort of epidemic scenarios. Lately at work I have been involved in making hard decisions regarding school closure as well as delivering online learning content while we are all apart. No decision to stop life as it is currently going is an easy one. As I have put it to my students, I would rather miss more school than know that our interactions together triggered an illness, prolonged problems or much worse.
IF you have not read up on the Spanish Flu outbreak there is an amazing article that I totally poured over and used as a resource over the last few days, you can check it out here. In that article if you really look into the case of Denver I found the information very informative an how the reactions from different cities can be very impactful to the outcomes of pandemics.
Well Cheers to Friday! Love this club.
I have outlined all of the ingredients for this project and documented them here for posterity.
I did have some help from my neighbor, as there is no possible way I should be consuming 38 lbs of brisket this year. Neither of us had done this before. Most of my inspiration for these projects comes from the Ruhlman book “Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking and Curing”. If you have never seen the book before it is the bible of cured meat.
On the topic of Edwards meats vs. Costco. I do have to say even though I dropped $120 at Costco on the meat that totally felt like a bargain compared to Edwards where I spent $75 on a brisket that was roughly 1/2 the size. I will add that the preparation needed for the Edwards brisket was virtually nothing compared to the Costco slabs, the Edwards slabs were really nicely trimmed up and clean. Both of the Costco slabs had huge portions of dark colored fat, skin and sections that I deemed way to gross to eat. So in the end I assume that I removed at least a pound of fat from each of the Costco briskets. It is nice now that I have a grinder that I can keep some of the better edible fats I removed for sausage making.
I will keep the updates coming on these projects. Hopefully this is a project that pays some large dividends later on.
Well a guy has to know what he is packing, as far as the weight of his meat goes.
But, yes, I know I wont hit weight loss for some time on those larger ones, probably 2 months. But the smaller ones I will need to keep an eye on them around the one month mark. The pink salt #2 does need over a month to convert in the nitrogen cycle to be safe to eat.
So sort of like brewing with original gravity you have to know the original weight of the meat to measure your losses. I am keeping the chamber around 85% humidity. This will make the drying process much slower and will (as far as I know) make the flavors more subtle and nuanced.
Just giving a small update. All the molds and bacteria seem to have come into full swing. I now have a nice penicillin coating on the salami to protect it from any nasties that might find their way into the chamber. The smell of the chamber is perfect, like the smell of meat in a deli.
I just now have to wait till I hit the magic number of 35%-40% weight loss.
Sam you might find their online shopping useful for ordering grain. I know when I show up there I am easily lost with the crazy amount and variety of grain the the grain room. The online tool helps me search up exactly what I need and have calculated for. You can let them know when you want to pick it up and as always continue to shop once you get there. I just find ordering my grain online saves me 15-30 min on each trip up there.
Sorry, late to the conversation here. I will also include this in the the next months meeting notes. Posted here for all you homebrewing geeks to plug into your favorite software or notepad.
June Meeting 2020 to showcase these beers.
75% – Crisp Maris – 2 row (not floor malted)
10% – Weyermann – Munich 10°
5% – Crisp 77 / Crystal 77 or a Crystal 60° / 80°
10% – Weyermann – Pale Wheat MaltAny hops / hop schedule
Any yeastI just don’t know how partial mash guys would participate; thinking of Jeff and Mick here. I guess would be happy to host anyone if they needed it.
Well after completing those first muscles I did some more reading, completed more research and arrived at some new goals and challenges for this new hobby. I did realize some of the mistakes I made and made note on how to fix these in the future.
I decided that my next endeavor was to be into pepperoni, salami and Spanish chorizo. As a regular pizza chef on Friday night in my kitchen I love a great pepperoni pizza, how amazing would it be to have a scratch pepperoni pizza with homemade pepperoni, sounds fucking amazing to me. Or having an Italian sandwich with homemade salami or a bowl of rice spiced up with some chorizo. With the new setup this had to happen.
One of the things that I am loving in doing charcuterie and salumi is how the process works and how I interact with it. Like brewing was for me years ago, I struggled to understand and replicate the processes I read about and do it efficiently on a schedule. In experimenting with this new hobby I am constantly checking my notes and recipes to ensure my efforts will return the highest quality product I can attain with my skills and my tools. It is nice to feel new in something again, I love the feeling of new experience in creating and using my hands.
I started out this project with a 21 lb pork shoulder and 5 lbs of eye of round from Costco. Then the long process of cutting them down to 1″x1″ cubes to fit in the grinder. Which now I realize that is like the longest part of the process of sausage making. It also became apparent to me that this is something that I can do before grind day to save time, just cubing meat and refreezing till grind day. I do enjoy going through the meat and pulling out anything I deem not appetizing, this is where my process excels over mechanically separated meats.
I made an alteration from the last time I did sausage. I measured the meat mixes of beef/pork, then spiced the meat, and then did the grind. I found this to help spread the spices out over the meat, so much so that I even reground 50% of the product to really even out the spices. When I did sausage last the product was not consistent and evenly seasoned because I mixed the spices after I did the grind. Additionally, I have found the secret to a successful grind is having the meat at freezing temps, this really helps the grind go fast and the grinder work more efficiently.
The meat needs to be emulsified so that all the proteins, spices, and fats are bound together and will maintain integrity once in the casing and cured. Really this means getting your hands deep into some damn near freezing meat and mixing for 5 minutes. This is also the step where I mix in the starter culture and the wine. The starter culture I used for all of these recipes was Bactoferm TSP-X, this was selected because it is set to a slower and lower temperature fermentation and should end with more mild flavor and low acidity.
Once everything is mixed we pack it all into the sausage stuffer and prep the casings. The casings I ended up using were large diameter (3 7/8″) collagen casings. This was my first experience using the collagen casings and I was surprised how nice they were to work with, I really enjoyed the uniform size and the strength when compared to natural casings.
Once all three of the salami types were stuffed they were then brushed with some Mold 600. This is the newest addition to my process. I am hoping that this addition will help protect this project and keep all of the funky bad things in the basement air at bay. All of the casings then were pricked so that they can dry out. I ended up stuffing the small amount of extra into some bratwurst size collagen casings, which is cool because those will finish in less than half of the time that the large diameter salami’s will.
All hung and now it is a waiting game with fermented meat. Updates to come.
What yeast are you using for this brew?
I really like that copper color and natural carbonation in the head. Looks delicious.
So the time came that I started hitting the correct weight loss from the muscles. I hit 40% weight loss on the three here. It is safe to take them down as low as 30% but I have read that the extra weight is worth it.
This is the Elk muscle from my friend.
A spicy pork loin:
A peppery pork loin:
Off the vacuum bags to equalize for a few weeks. The samples were delicious. Will update again.
