Homemade Sausage Making

Hi to all!
I probably have some kind of issue, could you please help me?
I've just made a salami, but Im a bit worried about it. The temperature was around 30 C/ 86 F degrees during fermentation and after 17 hours it already hits a pH of 5.00 and it smells tangy, almost sour. I used T-SPX culture (0.4 grams in 1250 gr of mince) together with fresh garlic (15g) and white wine (55ml). Does the garlic-culture overdose-white wine mix results the strong smell? Or is it just spoiled at that high temperature?
Is it gonna be ok, what do you think?

With a pH of 5.0 verified on a calibrated pH meter, you will be safe microbiologiaclly speaking. The wine likely dropped the pH to around 5.4-5.5 by my experience. 86*F is a little high for T-SPX as most use it to ferment at room temperatures 68-70*F where it will act slower to lower the pH. What else did you add to the salami? Any other sources of sugars for the bacteria to ferment? Any cayenne pepper or paprikas?

Yes, the initial pH was around 5.4. I added 2.5 grams of dextrose and 6 grams of white pepper powder and thats it.
Now it's in my drying chamber at 55 F/13 C but it still has a strong smell.

with an initial pH of 5.4, you only needed to drop the pH by 0.2~0.4 points to be safe. So 1-1.25grams dextrose/kilogram mince would have been plenty enough dextrose to drop the pH down to around pH5.0. I recommend dropping the temp. in your chamber to around 50*F as that may slow the fermentation to a crawl and prevent the pH from dropping too low.....

White pepper will not affect the pH as it does not contain appreciable amounts of fermentable sugars. It's the powder from dried vegetable peppers like paprika, cayenne, and bell pepper that have quite a bit of sugars....enough to affect pH.

Norbi wrote: ↑

Thu Jul 28, 2022 10:13

Yes, the initial pH was around 5.4. I added 2.5 grams of dextrose and 6 grams of white pepper powder and thats it.
Now it's in my drying chamber at 55 F/13 C but it still has a strong smell.

Yeah i agree with above. İt was most likely the wine that dropped the pH. You are countering the flavor development of the culture by adding wine to the farce. İ would recommend not to use wine and slightly drop the temperature to around 70F to get better organic flavor development.

Now the smells is gone and the salami dried out properly. I'll take your advices next time, thank you! But nobody told me if it's safe to eat or not because of the high fermenting temp, so I assume it is... ? It has the culture, and the curing salt so it's safe I suppose... I hope I'm right.

As Indaswamp stated above it was "safe microbiologically speaking". If it had not fermented to a Ph of 5.3 or below the possibility of spoilage is increased. I would eat it with a clear conscience, so enjoy!