Info on LHP DRY US culture

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tinbutcher
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Info on LHP DRY US culture

Post by tinbutcher » Wed Mar 29, 2017 11:01

Hello all,
I finally tried CHR Hansen LHP DRY US culture this week in a 20 lb. batch of snack sticks and they turned out great.
We dry cure everything in our plant and this fast acting culture did the trick. This was the first time I have ever used a culture so I was leery on how the taste would be...

However, I was confused on how much culture to use in a large batch of sausage so I contacted a rep from a company that sells the culture.
On the back of the culture pack it says to use 1/2 tsp for 10 lbs. of sausage, but the info on the front of the pack of culture says that 42 g. is enough for 500 lbs. of sausage.
Now there are only 10 tsps. in a 42g. pack of LHP culture which in my book equals 200 lbs. of sausage. Here is what the rep had to say...

"The amounts per packet are for 500# meat, if used at one time. 1/2 of the packet would inoculate 250# meat."

"What starts to happen when below this amount is if using the by weight reduction, it becomes difficult to measure because the amount is so little. Bactoferm is also mostly (85%) composed of dextrose and 15% Live freeze-dried bacteria, so at the smaller amounts it becomes questionable if, for example, a gram would be ALL dextrose or what proportion it would be... So for making small batches it is good to use minimum 1/2 tsp. The math doesn`t work mostly because of the swings in proportions between sugars/bacteria at smaller amounts.

I`m sorry that our usage instructions were confusing. We are working on making the wording clear. I hope you understand it isn`t intended to confuse, even though that has been the result for many people." end of quote

So for those of you who are getting started in this and if you are making big batches, this is good to know.
1 TSP of LHP will inoculate 50 lbs. of sausage....
Hope this helps,

Red
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redzed
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Post by redzed » Wed Mar 29, 2017 18:52

Thanks for that. It confirms what we have been saying in other discussions here. If you make a small batch you do have to add more than the calculated proportion based on the maximum amount of meat block. But some recipe books advise to use no less than a quarter or even half the package for small amounts and that is way too much and obviously a waste. I often make a 3-4kg amount of salami and rather than weighing, add 1/8 of a teaspoon of culture. And one also must keep in mind that if the culture has been stored for a long period, or you suspect that it was thawed for longer than a week or two, the live cell count has been probably diminished, so you should add a bit more.
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