If you have seen couple of the other post I've posted on recently. You may have noticed I trapped several beaver with the intention of make some bologna and summer sausage.
Tomorrow my friend is coming and we are going do our first try at batch ring bologna. We have seasoning mix from a company we have been getting our other sausage and stix mix from. But have never used the bologna mix.
Having not made beaver bologna before, we planning to mix the batch fry little
Taste it see if we need to tweak the mix some to our liking. By tweak I mean maybe add more garlic, onion , pepper etc
After reading some of the other post recently about raccoon fat. Venison canning and other cooking and smoking post. I'm kinda wondering if others here have their own recipe for beaver bologna or summer sausage? Do you add any sawdust for binder filler? If so do you use the same sawdust from kind of trees the beaver were cutting? Like willow or alder? The same question would apply to smoking. I plan to smoke this batch of beaver bologna. Should I also smoke with the same type wood the beavers were cutting? Or go with something they wouldn't like cut like pine. Although I have seen beaver cut small red pine.
The really big question is??? With the price of Castor being so high. How much castor should I be putting in a 25lbs batch?? Most all beaver lure with castor in it says use about bean size amount at a set. I have the castors from the beavers I trapped. But that is pure castor not mixed in a lure. So bean size might be to much in 25lbs???

LOL!

Seriously I will be making beaver bologna tomorrow. Won't be adding no saw dust or castor. Do figure to smoke it for several hours. I will be using mix hard wood mostly oak, ash maybe some maple.

I would appreciate any good recipes anyone has used they liked. If it can be measured out for 25lb batch I might give it a try next time.

I will try remember to take few pictures as we go tomorrow. Don't plan on smoking it until Friday. I usually leave most things like this stand 24 he or at least over night.

Mac

I had a job last year the beaver were cutting apple trees so maybe try smoking with apple wood.

After catching the beaver in a blue bucket set, Instead of adding saw dust, you could just add some of the partially digested bark and wood from the beaver's stomach and intestines for binder filler. Wood glue works well as a binder for beaver sausage too.

Keith

I’ve had beaver summer sausage many times, but have never made it. There is a friend that lives about sixty miles from me that brings it to our fall rondy to share about every fall. Man, it is delicious. He has a local packing house make it for him. Wish I had the recepe!

Sounds good. I've made various types of sausage with beaver, but never bologna.

Dang I wish I'd have made my post before I cleaned up all them beavers. I washed out the stomachs and all intestines to use for bologna and sausage casing. Never thought about using that. The wife wanted the stomachs to make cheese or yogurt in? I got the gizzards in a jar pickling in fridge.. Tails all spoken for for fish bait.
You know I did catch all the biggest beavers in blue bucket set. I'm very familiar with it.

Seriously though..
My older brother took one of the real small ones I caught. I dressed it out cleaned it up. He put a rub on it ran it in smoker for 6hr then baked it for couple hours. Him and his boys mopped it up like pulled pork. Not sure he even saved me enough for one Samich.. Told me not to put anyone the small one in bait pile. I'm pulling my one trap Saturday. So guess will see if is anymore dumb beavers left.

Mac

Today my partner in many crimes came to my house. We got the beaver for bologna ground an stuffed. It was kind of as I figured it would be very tender meat. So we decided to run it threw the coarse plate twice. I usually do venison sausage threw the coarse plate mix seasoning in then threw fine plate.
I already had some larger hog casing from when we made potato sausage. So the casings are bit smaller than beef casing some use.
The ring are covered and in fridge for the overnight rest. In morning I will get them in smoker. Get smoke to them 6-8 hour cold smoke.

My good friend Kevin feeding the beast. He is a grinding fool..


How mix looked after second grinder run.


Not sure how they will look or taste yet when done. They look pretty here.



Mac

You only use sawdust if your beaver came from the sewage holding ponds-you’re a mile below them so you should be good.

Looks good to me. What grinder you using?

looks great do you have recipe, ?

Looks good. Has anyone ever made beaver Pastrami? Our mechanic has been making it out of goose. If it makes snow geese taste that good I can’t imagine what beaver would taste like.

Looks good

Maybe I'm alone here, but I wouldn't put sawdust in anything I planned on eating.

LOL!

As my old pal Bugs Bunny would say...."You don't know me very well !" LMAO..

Didn't put any castor in it either...That may have been a mistake??
I sold the castor bought Fire Water..

Mac

That looks really good. I have used LEM's bologna seasoning several times with venison, I may have to try it with beaver meat. I would like to see some pics of the finished product and also your opinions on how it turned out.

Are you using any cure in the recipe?
Will just cold smoking cook off any parasites?

This is a new spice mix we are using and it has something in it called veg-a-cure not the pink nitrate stuff. Which I still need to do just a bit more reading up on.



My smoker is home built LP fired set up and does run cold. infact with the temp this morning at -12 the digital thermometer I have Bluetooth to my phone. It's says it's running pretty cool as I can check my phone for temp.




I don't get all into the whole run the smoker this long this temp then up to this temp or that temp. Don't got no controller for all that build up to finish. I go pretty much by how things look. What worked for run time on other things I've smoked.

Most everything I smoke I finish by bring in house and running it in oven. Especially something like the beaver where I want to get to at least 165 internal temp to kill anything might be in it. I can do that in my smoker in summer. Not now at -12 out side. For while tried using little pop up temperature indicators like see in turkeys. That works ok but you got of course keep buying them. Used my wife's digital prob thermometer and that works well.
My son bought the thermometer that is the screen shot above. It has one temp sensor and 5 probs. Once we got that figured out it's been great tool.
Above screen shot tells me the temp inside smoker is 84 that's cold smoke.. The second prob is in one ring of bologna on center rack. It's telling me the internal temperature of that ring is same as smoker temp.
When I finish this bologna I will add 4 more probs in rings in the oven. As each ring gets up to temp. I get and alarm and can pull it out. Now that I've learned the hot spots in the oven. I move the prob to another ring and maybe even move rings around.
Even with my barbaric methods I've never killed or injured any participants.


Mac

Well I said I would post picture when got to finish line. After bringing it in from the 7 hour run in smoker. I put it in the oven got lower rack up to internal 165 temp.
After seeing the outside not being uniform in color. Baked brown in places and not in others. While I don't think it will change anything except the texture of the casing. I think the next batch I will finish with a ten minute boil. I do that with weiners when make them. They have way more uniform look. And you can be sure you don't leave any under cooked spots. Boiling finish is really more about uniform appearance and know for sure can safely eat something cold from package.

It tastes fine but I like to wait until it's cooled and maybe even until tomorrow. When I mess with this stuff all day I get kinda nose blind.



Mac

Looks great!
Hope you enjoy it.

Well the bologna is all cooled down and vaccum sealed. I have to say I'm not disappointed one bit. I do think when I make bologna again I may go with a bit bigger casing. Just because I like bit bigger diameter bologna.
Tried little with my noon lunch today. Home made salsa, some chips and beaver bologna..
Tasty 😋







Mac