5.22.2008

Saucisson sec preparation

sausage curing chamber
(Click image for much better view)
Before tackling Ruhlman's saucisson sec, I needed a place for the sausage to undergo curing for about 3 weeks at 50°F and at least 60% relative humidity (RH). My beer fridge usually only has a single keg in it and I decided to tweak this chamber a bit to see if I could achieve a steady temperature/RH.

Baseline for the beer fridge is 45°F and 30-35% RH. Too dry. I thought some water in the bottom might increase the humidity. It did, to about 40%. After a number of different substrates placed in the fridge failed, I thought about increasing the water temperature by using a variable temperature hot pot. It's not a trivial problem. The fridge has a thermostat, the hot pot at a higher temperature will cause an increase in the vapor pressure of the water resulting in a higher humidity and finally the interdependence of the temperature and relative humidity make this environment nearly impossible to predict or calculate outcomes.

Empiricism to the rescue. I was able to fine tune both the fridge setting and hot pot setting to achieve the following boundary conditions:
38-40°F/40%RH with the hot pot on lowest setting (off)
48-50°F/68-70%RH with the hot pot at 90°F.

Also, at 90°F, the water barely evaporates over the course of 24 hours.

I have to have that kind of flexibility because of what Andrew warned me of. When the fresh sausage goes in for a cure, it loses water over time, thus increasing the humidity inside the chamber. Consequently, I need to be able to decrease the humidity contributed by the water bath to maintain a constant interior RH as the sausage cures.

I have some long term monitoring to do to validate the setup, but I'm confident enough, and the sausage ingredients are inexpensive enough to take a stab at it. Andrew, I may take you up on your generosity of the sausage stuffer loan, I can't wait any longer.

3 comments:

  1. Beer Keg and Sausage, how can it get any better. Paul Bertolli built his own little cave. I think your approach is a lot more economical. I hope to start making salumi in the near future. Thanks for the idea.
    I am having fun making sausage. We have Pork Shoulder on sale all the time in the Bay Area.

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  2. Totally Random. After spending months trying to figure out how to obtain constant humidities at a variety of temperatures for my doctoral research (and having filled many a heated humidity reservoir), I strongly suggest checking out salt solutions. For instance, standard table or road salt reliably gets about 75%RH at a variety of temperatures.

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  3. Hey Steph,

    Yeah, those doctoral thingies are pretty useful, eh? I got one some years ago.

    The problem isn't getting UP TO 75% but the ambient temp in the basement is, at times, greater than that. A small slurry of salt/water isn't going to decrease the RH in a large volume of moist air appreciably. This is complicated by the fact that I need my environment slightly opened to have an air volume exchange once in a while. So, I'm working with a semi-open container. In the winter, when RH is much lower, the NaCl slush would be perfect. In summer, I might have to go with a NaBr slurry or even CaCl2. Still working on it. It's hardly random, just challenging.

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