Smoking questions for a variety of sausages

My dad and I are planning to make 30 pounds of pork butts into a variety of sausages this weekend, which I will smoke on Monday in my WSM. I'm guesstimating a 20 pound yield split evenly among 4 varieties: Italian, Kielbasa, Andouille and Hungarian.

We've done sausage a few times before, but I've gotten a lot of good tips in this section of the forum. And raised a few questions.

1 - Is smoking to a temp of 150 necessary to get the sausage to set up, like storebought Kielbasa or Andouille? Or is it done to keep in a safe temperature range? Or both?

2 - What type(s) of wood would you suggest? I really don't have any clue what is traditional for the Kielbasa or Hungarian, and I'm fresh out of sugar cane for the Andouille. I'm thinking a blend of apple and hickory.

Thanks for your help!

your yield from 30 lbs of pork butt, even bone-in, will be much closer to 30 lbs than 20. You will probably only have 2-4 lbs of trim waste.

You will also add a significant amount of weight back to the sausages in the form of seasoning, water, and binders depending on your recipes.

In re: your questions,

Smoking to a temp of 150 is simply cooking the sausages. If you're going to apply heat to the sausages in the form of smoke you should probably cook them through for food safety concerns.

If you meant smoking AT a temp of 150 the purpose of this is to cook the sausage gently which allows you to apply a lot of smoke without rendering out the fat in the sausages. Too high of a temperatures will cook the sausages faster than you might want for andouille and you will get insufficient smoke/might burst your sausages.

I would probably use light hickory wood or apple or a blend of both.

A couple final notes: the 18.5 WSM doesn't have as much room as you might think for sausages. You have to make sure that the coil is within the diameter of the water pan or the outer ring of sausage will get overcooked long before the inner sausages are ready.

Finally there are some big temperature differences within the WSM so depending on the way you have the water pan set up you will have the top or bottom rack of sausages cooked first. Same concern if you hang the sausages in the WSM on smoke sticks or a similar setup.

Good luck!

Thanks Dave. I'm planning to do 4 levels using firebricks to hold a pizza screen and also Jim Lampe's trick using my charcoal rails to hold the rack out of my kettle. I'm guessing it still might be 2 batches.

It wasn't much more than 20 pounds because these turned out to be bone-in shoulders and not butts, but it actually worked out since all 4 recipes were based on 5 pounds of meat. Everything was ground and seasoned today, and we're going to fry off meatballs of each to check for seasoning and then stuff tomorrow. The smoking will happen Monday.

I'm planning to take the saucer out and use the water pan. How cool would you smoke?

Good luck, Jon.
Please post you results and notes...homemade andouille and kielbasa are on my "to do" list sometime when I get to it.
I'm most interested in the very low smoke temp on the WSM for extended periods...I've never attempted that. I read somewhere that Bradley smokers (I know...somewhat a swear word here) work fairly well for colder temp smokes, but talking the wife into buying another smoker just for sausage is out of the question. Besides, I'm sure the WSM will do a fine job.

I find that wsm temps below 200* are pretty impractical (but everyone has their own definition of impractical). Going hotter works pretty well and might be the way to go if you need to finish two batches.

I invested in a smoke generator that allows me to smoke a little above ambient temps, and then I finish the sausage in a low oven.

Jon,

As J points out, smoking below 200 can be a bit tricky but it is doable. Smoking is generally done for flavor and the Andouille, Kielbasa and Hungarian (although Hungarian is many times cold smoked) can be smoked. The Italian, while it can be smoked, is more traditionally a fresh sausage; cooked to order.

I'd recommend smoking in a temp range of 160-170. This is important so as not to render too much fat out of the sausage as this will negatively affect the texture (mouth feel). A very light Minion Method and use of a pan with water will help keep your temps down. You'll really need to keep an eye on the coals. At these temps you'll need to use nitrite (pink salt) in your recipes (smoking only)for safety reasones. Smoked sausages can be pulled when their internal temp hits 154. At 154, remove the sausage, give them a good cold shower, immerse in cold water, then refrigerate. The rinsing and water bath help eliminate the wrinkling that sometimes occures between casing and meat.

Paul

It's been my experience that the WSM can hold temps at 170 pretty steadily. It might creep up to 200 if you're not careful about it but like Paul says a light minion method works a charm.

Start with only 4 hot coals, cinch your vents down at 120, and you'll more than likely get a good 5+ hours of temperatures at or below 170.

And, yes, nitrite is necessary for smoking sausages at this temperature for health concerns. Most andouille recipes call for it, anyway, for color and flavor if for no other reason.

Thanks for the advice everybody. It was a long day of smoking, cooling and freezing sausage. I cold smoked the Italian (lightly) and Kielbasa (heavily) for about an hour at 70-150. The Hungarian went for around the same time a little hotter, and then I cooled it down and finished off with the Andouille. From the little bit I've tried it's been a big success. I will say that in the future I'll probably look into using nitrite so I don't have to be so worried about temperatures.

I posted some shots over in the Photo Gallery if you'd like to see more.

Too late to help with this cook but I posted pics here of what I came up with for maintaning a low temp for putting lots of smoke to bacon. Might be of help in the future. it takes some tending/watching, but hey thats what beer is for.

Thanks Todd. Great looking bacon, too. That's next on my list to try.