Let's talk casings

[Livin the dream]

Last night I was looking at ps seasonings online catolog and I'm a little confused on casings. What do you guys use? I'm thinking I'm gonna try natural casings first.  What are beef rounds, beef middles and beef bung caps?  Then I saw collagen, anyone use these? I've decided to make rh1's ring Bologna as first attempt. What size casings to I need to order? Thanks for the help. 

[KEN W]

Casings come in a lot of different sizes. Sheep, pork, and beef are natural. I have never used beef. They are to big for most sausages. Sheep casings are used for making snack sticks. Pork for most other sausages. Casings come in metric sizes....Millimeters. Most sausages use 28-34 mm size. I like 28-32 mm because a lot of times I eat them in a bun.

Collagen casings are made from cowhide. They come in various sizes  Some for using with fresh sausage are thinner. Some for smoked sausage are thicker so they don't break when hanging in a smoker. Almost all the commercial sausage you see in the store are made with collagen casings because they can make them all the same exact size.

Ring bologna is usually made with  30-34 mm pork casings. You can make them into rings by tying the ends together. Look at Reinhold's page to see how to do this. I don't make them into rings. I make them into links. Again so they can fit into a bun easier. If you do make them into links, don't get them  to full. So they won't break them when linking.

There are also Fibrous casings which are inedible and used to make summer sausage, and salami.

Looking at PS Seasonings......I  buy the 29-32 mm size. They are the perfect size for eating them in a bun.

 

 

Edited March 3, 2016 by KEN W

[Boar]

most of curleys kits comes with casing for sticks and summer sausage, for rauts and ring balony I go to a meat market butcher guy place and buy a hank of natural hog casings. Hank, just one more term in smoking lingo, there are plenty of casing in one hank.  Cool your cutting your teeth on ring baloney, I did sticks first time out. there are certainly do"s and donts to consider. the casing for example, they are quite long, and Ive cut them down to half length, cause ive only a kitchen table to work with, and first tiem with ring baloney since I didnt tie of the ends, i just twisted into rings, casings cant be to full for this, so I gently picnh where i want to twis or it will burst, then the next ring I would gentliy pinch an twist the opposite way than the first or it will untwiste the first, confusing but once you dig in youll understand, the casings are very durable, I wanted to handle with kid gloves at first but their tough. so I cut them in half lengths cause a full lenght cassing takes up alot of space coming out of the tube and it has to some wheree., soak the cassing in a bowel of water and I also rinse the insides, hold it up to the faucet like yur filling a water ballone and let the water run thru the casing.  you can google a video of stuffing brauts to get an I dea of the process better than I can explain it. it can be a love hate relationship filling the cassin to the right amount with out bursting, if you burst, simply pinch off or tie both ends an continue, you'll get a stubby or two or three, it all eats the same. good luck!!

[reinhard1]

I think Ken and Boar gave some great info.  I do ring bologna in rings and links as you can see on my page.  I like the rings because I'm an old sausage head and just used to old ways in some ways, but those links are just as good and very handy on a bun like Ken said.  As far as casings for them I also use hog casings in the 32mm to 35mm range.  I think that's the most common size for brats, polish links also.  Sheep casings are hard to work with and I stopped using them.  Just to small for me anyway.  I get my hog casings right here at a Cub store where I shop.  Each pack makes about 25 pounds.  You can get a better deal on hanks though.  One hank will make a lot of sausage.  

When you get the casings make sure you rinse the salt off and run water from the sink through the casings before use.  Let the clean casings set in water overnight for stuffing the next day.  This will make them plyable.  Check my page and it shows how to do this.  I use collagen casings in the 22mm size for sticks.  They work great for sticks.  Those you don't soak.  The don't have a memory so they don't link well at all.  Beef rounds are a lot larger and used for much larger ring bologna, ring liver, or larger diameter sausage.  I haven't used them in years and I think that is one that you will probably not use at this point.  good luck.

[Livin the dream]

Thanks again guys. I'm going to start making sausage when the ice is no longer safe to fish.

[Boar]

what he said

[blue_healer_guy]

so if I got it right, you need to use hog casings to link like for brats.  I was gonna try collagen, but doesnt sound like that will work

[Boar]

yup.go to.a butcher shop and ask for a hank of natural.hog casings.