More sausage

This weekend I'll be smoking about a half dozen to a dozen each of Irish Bangers, Jumbo Dogs(and I mean jumbo), Polish Sausages, Italian sausages and Sheboygan Sausages plus an order of Smokin's Beans. Kinda went crazy with the sausages but I had to justify the trip. The sausages look great, can't wait. Not quite the volume Todd talks about but it'll smell great around here. We'll freeze some for future meals

Sounds really good, maybe a few pics are in order!

with that many, you really should try different woods to see if they take on more of that. If you do them all with the same wood, that gets "boring" to me.

I like cherry for an alternative

OK. I'll try two batches with different woods. I'll see how the pictures work Trucky.

Well. I decided to call the Sausage Kitchen before I started the smoking process just to make sure they "cured" their sausage. Good thing I checked. NO PRESERVATIVES. With no preservatives or cure, I couldn't air dry or smoke from the low and long starting temperatures required for properly smoking the sausage.

Looks like I'm going to have to grill the whole bunch of them. Unless someone has had good luck using just the traditional 225* smoking method on sausage. I did with the Italian Sausage but am not sure it's the best way to go with the different types of sausage I purchased. Any suggestions or experience with smoking the sausage like the larger cuts of meat??

After reading a few threads on the sausage forum, I'm going to smoke all the sausage at 225* and see how they turn out. It worked well with the Italian Sausage. Cold smoking wasn't in the cards without the cure.

I started the sausages at 225*, smoked them for 2 hours then kicked the temperature up to 275* for the last 20 minutes. They turned out quite well.

Here is a picture of the first batch before going into the smoker:

Here's the rest of them:

In the Elite ready for smoking:

The sausages smoked and ready to eat/freeze. All five flavors turned out tasty, moist, and smokey. My favorite was the Shoboygan Sausage--mild, smooth, smokey.

Pags - I would like to try this. How did you know when to pull them out? Did you base on time, or use a probe? Cut one open?

I was thinking about finishing on the grill in place of the last 20 min at 275 (which may make my first question a mute point...)

I used a Thermopen instead of a probe because of the different sizes. When they got to 155* (when some say they're done), I kicked them up to 275* for apprx. 20 minutes. I just like my sausage done somewhat well with a little brown on the skin (grill would work fine). They were not over cooked but moist.

I looked at them after one hour to dump some moisture (there were droplets on some of the sausages) and at 2 hrs. used the Thermopen (no moisture after a couple hours). They were at 155* at two hours so you might want to check earlier.

They had a mild smoke flavor with my smoker giving off good smoke. To get the stronger smoke flavor, I think the cold smoke method (starting low, slow and building the temperature like some threads suggest) would accomplish that. But you'd need a sausage with a cure in it. As an alternative, you might want to start the sausages cold (mine sat out for 20 minutes) at 180* or 200* to give them more time in smoke. I used cherry, and hickory would give a stronger smoke flavor.

Either way I think you'll enjoy. Happy smoking.