A lot of the "natural" products also use a celery extract that provides a know amount of the necessary cure per gram. It is the same thing as the chemical lab produced Cure #1, but it is made only from celery, so it is "natural". You can buy it on line at most sausage supply places. http://www.butch...

I have been buying pork from "Colorado Meat Company" in Avon. It is a small butcher shop that sells locally sourced meats. They butcher whole hogs and cut butts (for instance) with a lot of hard fat still left on. They also sell back fat, which I freeze, and it seems to keep just about forever, but ...

Lou,

How did the T-SPX taste different from the 007? Is it something you can describe? Did you ferment them both to the same pH? I have only ever used T-SPX, so I'm curious how you found another culture to be different in taste.

I'm seeing equal weights of lard and rice flour, and then pepper equal to about 1.5% of their combined weight added.

Dextrose tastes about 75% as sweet (by weight) as plain sugar, so you could take the sugar weight in a recipe and multiply it by 1.33 to get the amount of dextrose for "equal sweetness". I suspect it will burn at about the same cooking temperature as regular sugar or honey. I've used all 3 in candy ...

I`ll do a good controlled experiment on the next batch. These are 2 slightly different recipes, 5% fat difference and 30 ml. of wine different (for 4.4 kilo each). Not sure if either is enough to make a real difference, but it would be better to remove all variables except the casing material. But t...

You nailed it, redzed. At 3 weeks there is a hint of white mold starting to be visible on the PS treated items. I`ll brush it off and retreat them today. Interesting side note. The pieces are both jowls, same size. One is hanging naked. The other has a coating of spices on the outside after rinsing ...

Thanks for the responses. I calibrated at the start and end of about 60 hours of fermentation. The error was 0.03 in all cases, so not worrisome. I also had noticed the smiley face is not a stable indicator. I`ve set the "hold" function on, and it only shows "hold" after about 10 seconds of a smiley...

Apera users: Do you calibrate before each measurement session, or less often? Do you add any distilled water to your sample to make a slurry? I am on my first run of salami and the readings vary somewhat based on where I insert the probe in the sample. I`ve been taking 5 readings, ignoring the highe...

Seems I am moving much slower than I anticipated. I added a new piece to the chamber recently that has others drying in it already, with good coatings of mold. They were dipped, but the new one was not, and it acquired nice white mold pretty fast, so I know the chamber is "lively" with the 600 mold....

They look great! Bon appetite! (Are we invited??)

I was a vegetarian for 15 years and I am still reconciling myself to eating meat again. One of my goals is to use all of the hog with no waste, out of "respect" for the loss of life, so I really should be doing my own butchering from at least half a hog. The workshop you found would get me started b...

Has anyone done one of these workshops?

http://www.sapori-e-saperi.com/advanced ... scany.html

Looks like a dream learning experience for me, and I`m due a "big" vacation right around when they have their March session (or at least I am very close to convincing myself of that).

Is this in the neighborhood? It`s like a fermento style.

https://thaifoodmaster.com/preparation/fermentation/155

. . . off to hunt a recipe . . .