Bob K wrote:What % of relative humidity are you guys targeting? Mine stays at 80-85 %, usually closer to 85 and I rarely have case hardening on chubs up to 65mm the 76mm 3" still have a bit of a dry rim though.
Chris - the Auburn sensor really spikes if you open the door when it is warm and humid out and takes a while to recover. It will also happen if you try to introduce outside air from your air exchange system if the Rh is high. They seem to be sensitive to condensation.
Bob, in the last two batches I targeted 78% RH and it worked well on 40-50mm sopressata. In my current batch I am doing a staged approach that Marianski described in one of his books. I started off with 88% for the first 5 days, then 83% the next 5 days, and now I am staying at 78%. I might drop down to 75% in the final days. Will see how this turns out.
I also noticed stronger case hardening on my thicker sausages. This is the biggest reason I went with a dual controller set up. I read somewhere that as Aw drops and outside humidity stays high, drying slows down causing case hardening and soft, mushy center - exactly what I had been experiencing before.
Another interesting observation, and maybe I am just imagining things here, is that Bactoferm 600 maybe responsible for a lot of my case hardening issues. I know, this sounds counter intuitive, but my very first batch with 12 lbs of meats and no dehumidifier turned out fantastic. Yes, I had some green mold here and there, but nothing major. If I recall, the average RH was 88-90 initially, then dropped to 85-86 %. The sausages developed a very thin layer of dry, chalky mold.
With Bactoferm 600 I get a layer of wet, greyish, sticky goo at RH above 80%. It seems to never dry causing me to wipe it off. Lot's of case hardening and mushy meat in the center. It's barely a problem now, I get a thick coat of white mold, but I am thinking of dropping it for the next batch. With better RH control bad molds will hardly be a problem. I suspect that that thick white mold is actually retarding drying rather than helping it.