Thanks Bob, everyone seems to like his recipe. I prefer to smoke to keep the mold at bay. While I understand the benefit of mold on the slow cured salami I don`t see the need in faster fermentations and actually find its presence problematic because when I cryovac the mold turns ugly and I don`t like the thought of pulling the casings off each stick before packaging. By omitting mold, I can go straight in the bag and once sealed the casing comes off easy when opened and it looks much more appetizing. Using cherry, the smoke is hardly noticeable when fully dried but it does smell wonderful when it first begins the drying cycle but fades about half way through.
You noted the aW of 0.91 and the 30% shrink. Its pretty neat how we can use science to prove the old methods were right. I had suspected this but I had to know. Like everything else in this craft there are a lot of variables we need to understand and while it is safe at this point its actually safe sooner since the pH and the aW both play a part. The most concise guide I found relating to this is from the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute (AURI) where they give the following guide:
Its stable when:
*** pH of less than 5.0 or
*** Water activity of less than 0.91; or
*** pH of less than 5.2 and a water activity of less than 0.95
Looking at my time line you can see it became stable sometime between 4-6 and 4-7 when the shrink hit 20% which incidentally is the shrink used for semi-cured sausages. I also thought it interesting this was also the time when the rosy color first became obvious. When it bloomed.
With all this in mind I wanted to see how all of this effected our main pathogens. Here is some more info on this I thought helpful in getting my head around how our safety hurdles come into play.
Microorganism Water Activity Growth Limit Value Based on aW only.
Escherichia coli 0.95
Salmonella spp. 0.95
Listeria monoctyogenes 0.92
Stahphylococcus aureus 0.88
As a disclaimer, I would like to say there are a lot of variables that affect all of this as well as some conflicts in numbers and I am far from understanding all this but in general I think if someone used common sense they could use this example to give themselves a better understanding of what is going on with their salami as it is created. For me, it`s reassuring to see things become stable much sooner than I once thought - at least for fast fermented sausages where pH plays a major role. As for the slower fermented sausages it seems things are a bit more complicated and it took more understanding on my part to prove to myself but I succeeded but I won`t bore you with that "book". I think I`ve said enough.
I may just be a simpleton, but I just find this whole subject interesting and think it cool to be able to smell the aromas, watch the bloom and see the angel tears and understand what these signs mean. I believe when someone understands what these aromas and signs indicate they will be sharing the art of our ancestors.