potassium sorbate

[jamadlavy]

Hello everyone, this my first post.

I am a complete newbie at fermented sausages and my very first attempt is a few chorizo sausages now drying in a fridge I converted. I followed Mr. Marianski's recipe and recommendations from "the art of fermented sausages" and things appear to be going as expected so far : temperature and RH stay within 0.3 of set point, pH dropped to 5.0 in 339 degree-hours, there is nice shrinkage, color is getting darker and it still smells pretty good in the chamber.

Wanting no mold on the chorizo, I sprayed them at the very beginning with a 7.5% potassium sorbate solution which has done its job to keep mold at bay for the first 20 days. Last night, however, I discovered some white mold starting to grow here and there on the casings and I was tempted to wipe them with some more potassium sorbate solution but I keep reading about using vinegar to do this.

So here are my questions : Why is vinegar recommended and not potassium sorbate ? Is there a reason not to re-apply potassium sorbate at this point? Would it not be more effective ?

Thanks for sharing your knowledge

Eric

[Cabonaia]

Hr Eric - Welcome to the forum!

My first guess is that everybody has vinegar in their cupboard, but not potassium sorbate. I also read that it is effective as a preservative up to a pH of 6.5. Its effectiveness falls off as pH is lowered.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/31559 ... m-sorbate/

Brighter minds will weigh in, I am sure. Vinegar does work very well. You have followed Marianski's advice to a T so far and you're getting good results - why not continue?

Cheers,
Jeff

[jamadlavy]

Thanks for the welcome Jeff

Makes sense, lowered effectiveness would definitely be a good reason to use something else.

When using vinegar, will I need to reapply it regularely or is this usually a lasting solution ?

Thanks

Eric

[Cabonaia]

Vinegar, or a half-and-half vinegar and water solution, is not a permanent solution, but will probably get you a couple weeks. It very much depends on what conditions you are fighting, which will be unique to the wild spores in your area, what else you have hanging in your chamber, the humidity level you are keeping, and how much air exchange your chamber has. I usually don't use vinegar because I like white mold, but when I have used it the results have been instant and fairly long lasting.

It is worthwhile to check your sausages every day to see what's going on with them - kind of like raising animals! My curing chamber does not have a vent, so I open the door morning and evening and wave it around a bit for some air exchange. When I get mold I don't want (anything but white), I apply vinegar. At that point I usually wipe down the surfaces of the chamber as well.

Cheers,
Jeff

[Igor Duńczyk]

One more wellcome to the Forum Eric -and this time a Danish/Polish one!

As for the potassium sorbate solution be aware that too much of a good thing is not necessarily still a good thing: Even if Potassium sorbate (and Sodium benzoate) can serve to inhibit mold and yeast it may also have a bacteriostatic effect which, if it penetrates the casing, may cause reduced bacteria activity near the surface of the salami and with that some miscoloring (that´s at least what my R&D tells me, as I haven´t any previous experience with sorbate-surface treatment).

I would, like Jeff, rather opt for the vineager solution and count on the possibility of regularely wiping off unwanted mold spots with the wineager solution.

Jeffs additional wiping off the inside of the chamber/room is also a sound piece of advice as mold spores will lure in every little crack and corner, and even if they are impossible to eliminate totally you can always try to do your best to keep them at bay...

[jamadlavy]

Thanks to you as well for the welcome Igor

And one more point in favor of vinegar !

So I wiped the sausages with pure vinegar last night and it worked quite well to remove the mold. While I had them out of the chamber, I took some weight measurement and found out they had lost roughly 1/3 of their initial weight. I also noticed the sausages are getting firm to the touch on the outside, but if I apply a bit of pressure, there is some "give" and that is leading me to believe the center is much softer than the outside. My guess, without having opened one, is that the harder "skin" is about 1/4" or 6mm thick.

I hope this is normal ? I did not follow Marianski's recommendations to the letter and used larger diameter casings I had on hand (65mm) so this might have an impact I suppose.

Thanks guys

Eric

[Igor Duńczyk]

Hi Eric,

If you may have read some of my answers to a. o. wilburwb (Bill)´s thread "I think I screwed up" (...well, he didn´t ) you will notice that I am really trying to preach the gospell of HIGH HUMIDITY during the fermentation phase. Please also take a look on ericrice (Eric)´s thread "air circulation needed" as he, in my eyes, is setting a real example of how to do it right.

Now, if you report a weight loss of one third in 20 days I would think you are out of the danger zone of facing a hard dry rim buildup under the casing which could block moisture from migrating through the surface. To be on the sure side just keep up humidity so the surface don´t start drying out.

One question: as I don´t know the recipe can you tell me how much paprika was added pr. kg. (or lb.), how much dextrose/sugar and what kind of starter culture you used?

It would be nice with a picture or two when you think time is ripe for slicing. In case something got a little wrong (let´s hope not...) it could give an opportunity to make some diagnosis. Or in the best case earn you laurels

[Igor Duńczyk]

PS: Yes you are right: a smaller calibre casing (40mm, 50mm) would have been a more safe choice as the pH drop below 5,3 will occur more rapidly.
But let´s see how things develop

[jamadlavy]

Sorry, I took a long time in answering, I was out of town for a few days. I did read both recommended threads, which reassured me, specially since I also used collagen casing.

To answer your question, the recipe calls for 100g of paprika, 10g dextrose, 10g sugar for 5kg of meat. I used the recommended T-SPX culture.

I haven't gotten around to slicing the sausages and taking pictures yet but here is one of the whole set-up just before fermentation.



as far as humidity, the recipe called for 72 hours at 20C and 90 to 85 %RH for fermenting and then 16-12C and 85 to 80 %RH for 1 or 2 months drying. so here is what I kept the chamber at :

days.....temp.....%RH...air speed
1-2........20.........90......high
3...........20.........88......high
4-5........16.........85.....med
6-7........15.........84.....med
8-9........15.........83.....med
10-11.....15........83......low
12-14.....14........82......low
15-17.....13........81......low
18-now...12........80......low

unfortunately I could not measure air speed so I have no idea what high, med and low represent in terms of m/s, just what the recirculation fan was set at.

I hope decerasing temp, humidity and air speed gradually this way was what Marianski meant in the instructions. I know you recommend keeping humidity "high" for 2 weeks, but what do you consider a high humidity content ?

I noticed today that for the first time the humidifier was switched on by the humidistat instead of the small fan I use to exchange air with the outside of the chamber and lower humidity (Since the chamber/refrigerator is in my garage which is only heated to 5C and that outside temp goes to -20C at night, ambiant air in the garage is quite dry and only a small air exchange fan is required to keep humidity down)

I think what this means is that the sausages are now getting much drier because they do not give off enough water vapour to maintain 80% RH in the chamber. I'll probably open one this weekend to see where they are at and post some pictures as well.

thanks

Eric