My first Pepperoni. What did I do wrong?


 
A

Aaron Patterson

New member
Hi,

This is the first time I've tried curing meat. I've been making sausage and smoking meats for a while, but this is my first try curing.

I read The Art of Making Fermented Sausages, and used the recipe for pepperoni (as that seemed simplest). I fermented the sausages for 3 days (as instructed), but the pH level didn't seem to drop. I started out at 6, it went to 5.75, and when the meat finished (this week) it was at 7. During the first 72hrs, I kept the meat between 70 and 72 degrees F, and the following 6 weeks I kept it around 60F. I cured them in hog casings (since I don't have beef middles), but I'm not sure if that matters.

Any ideas why my pH didn't continue to lower? What should I do if the pH doesn't drop? Thanks for the help!

Despite the pH not dropping, the meat still looks and tastes good. :-)

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EDIT: I forgot to mention, I kept the humidity controlled at 85-90% during the first three days, then around 80% for the remaining 6 weeks.
 
Thank you! It's my first try.

Yes, I used a starter culture: T-SPX. I *thought* the pH would drop, but maybe somehow I killed the bacteria. I'm not sure how though.
 
Thanks for the encouragement! I am really happy with the finished product. It's just my first time making this, so I was worried when the pH didn't drop.
 
The nitrate cure you added probably protects against botulism, so saftety isn't a large concern here IMO. I've never measured PH in my sausages - do you feel like it has a "tangy" flavor?
 
I don't think it's that tangy. It definitely tastes different than pepperoni I've had from the store, but I assume that's because I did a longer cure.
 
That looks great!

May I ask how you regulated the temps for the fermentation period?

oh what you are using to regulate everything
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I have my eye out for a wine fridge on CL that I'm going to use as soon as I find one I'm going headfirst into this..
 
I'm using a wine fridge that I've outfitted with a freezer temperature controller. My wine fridge goes up to 65F, but the book says I need to ferment at 68F. I'm not sure if 3 degrees would really make a difference though, so I don't know if I actually need to have the extra temperature controller.

The cool thing about the wine fridge I have is that there is an LED light built in at the top. The fridge supplies the light with 12V DC. I bought a fan that's powered from USB, so I'm going to step the voltage down to 5V and install a USB port inside the fridge. I'll post pictures and howtos when I'm done! :-)
 
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Dave from Denver:
The nitrate cure you added probably protects against botulism, so saftety isn't a large concern here IMO. I've never measured PH in my sausages - do you feel like it has a "tangy" flavor? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
This is not true entirely.... The hurdle effect of salt and cure addition, fermentation(pH drop), possibly a heat treatment to inactivate E.coli if you used beef, and then a further hurdle of drying that makes the product safe...why doesn't anyone worry about Staph E coli. or salmonella??? It's real! Nitrite does guard against botulism as mentioned but there are other significant pathogens to consider when making dry sausage.
Chr. Hansons tspx is a specialty boutique style culture that is used in soppresatta and Milano salamis which contains low temp fermenting bugs. Fr a pepperoni where you don't care so much about flavor from the culture you can stick with a straight pediococcus acidilatisi(sp) which creates acid quickly and can tolerate heat.
Lastly, certain strains of culture are not as salt tolerant as others so it helps to add them first or last but it is best to add salt last so you don't extract too much protein during the mixing process.
Hopefully that helps!
 
Forgot to ask what was used as a food source for the culture, dextrose, or cane sugar are most common from my experience. Here again, certain strains of acid producing starter cultures will convert sugars differently. For a pepp I suggest dextrose
 
Hi Steve!

Thanks for the information. I used 0.3% sugar and 0.2% dextrose to feed the bacteria. One problem though is that I did not measure the pH of the mixture before calculating the sugar and dextrose. I probably should have made pH measurements and calculated sugar and dextrose amounts from that.
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Regardless of the starting pH you really didn't give the culture much to ferment. What was your target finished pH? 5.3 or 5.0?
Keep in mind that when cultures run out of carbs they can produce ammonia and raise the ph afterwards ......not good. Some bounce back during aging is ok but you need the drop first for sure
 
Well I was targeting around 5.3. I mean, that's what the book I'm going by says I should be targeting.

The book I'm going by is "The Art of Making Fermented Sausages", and I took the percentages from the recipes in that book. The recipes don't seem to indicate a target pH, but the rest of the information in the book seems to indicate that 5.3 should be my target for slow fermenting with TSPX cultures.

Should I be increasing my sugar and glucose? Is there a rough formula for calculating pH drop based on glucose / sugar content?

Again, thanks for the help. I appreciate it!
 
No problem. I ferment pepperoni for a living!

I would increase the dextrose to .75 and you should be ok. 5.3 or 5.0 is fine. It may also dry easier if you drop the ph a bit past 5.3 There is a curve that demonstrates water holding capacity and how it diminishes as salt is added and ph is reduced.
Ill have to check that book out...I'm curious why they are recommending tspx...that is usually used for specialty salami and soppresatta as it generates great flavor and aroma due to the staph portion of the culture.
Either way though your pepp looks great!
 
Thanks! I'll try 0.75% next time.

The book actually has several recipes for pepperoni, but only one of them used TSPX. This was my first time curing meat, and I wanted to try doing a slow cure. The TSPX pepperoni recipe seemed to be the easiest, so that's what I went with!
 
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