Homemade Sausage Making

Have any of you guys ever stuffed your sausage and hung it at room temperature to dry and maybe used a fan to speed up the drying process so you can put it in the smoke?

I did that on my last batch. The only difference I noticed was when the sausage was finished in the smokehouse the casings turned out a lot tougher than normal. Everything else I did was the same so I'm wondering if using the fan over dried the casing and caused this. It wasn't a bad batch of casings, had some good sausage come from the same package.

I use a fan every time I'm going to smoke sausage, or anything where I want a pellicile to be formed, seems the casing always come out a little tough. I might try the poaching method again soon to see if that makes the casing end up a little softer. RAY