Dave from Denver
TVWBB Wizard
I know I dole out a lot of advice on here about air-drying meat, but I'm far from an expert.
Here's a recent batch of salami I hung. I fermented this using yogurt as a culture, and hung it in my chamber at 10-15C 50-65F at 80%RH at first and then adjusted down to 65-70% RH. This took about a month to lose 40% weight from raw weight. They never really got hard.
The difference from past attempts that have worked for me is that I had installed a 20mm vent fan and matching intake, and I had it running 6 times per day for 15 minutes each time. That was clearly too much.
Was surprised to find air pockets as I don't think I could've stuffed them any more firmly.
No off smells here but as you can see the inside is raw. Into the trash they go. Live and learn!
So, just let this show you that even if your RH and temp is strictly controlled you need to stay on top of your airflow. It seems like it's easy to have way too much airflow than too little (although I have had batches fail for too little as well... go figure).
Here's a recent batch of salami I hung. I fermented this using yogurt as a culture, and hung it in my chamber at 10-15C 50-65F at 80%RH at first and then adjusted down to 65-70% RH. This took about a month to lose 40% weight from raw weight. They never really got hard.
The difference from past attempts that have worked for me is that I had installed a 20mm vent fan and matching intake, and I had it running 6 times per day for 15 minutes each time. That was clearly too much.
Was surprised to find air pockets as I don't think I could've stuffed them any more firmly.
No off smells here but as you can see the inside is raw. Into the trash they go. Live and learn!
So, just let this show you that even if your RH and temp is strictly controlled you need to stay on top of your airflow. It seems like it's easy to have way too much airflow than too little (although I have had batches fail for too little as well... go figure).