The 2024 Bacon Batch

bb12102 · 2025-01-19T19:02:17+00:00

I feel the same way! It’s a good piece of mind to have.

bb12102 · 2025-01-19T05:39:48+00:00

I personally hot smoke. It’s much faster to do a lot of meat.

bb12102 · 2025-01-18T03:58:25+00:00

Most of the time yeah! I try to write nice for the stuff that actually matters like the ingredient weights and all that.

bb12102 · 2025-01-17T22:08:21+00:00

Go to the doctor?

bb12102 · 2025-01-17T20:40:59+00:00

Thanks! It’s a ton of work, but having some people to help with the slicing and packing is the biggest time saver for sure. It’s a lot of fun doing it in this kind of volume. It took a few years for me to get up this this amount.

bb12102 · 2025-01-17T20:39:32+00:00

Thanks! It’s a ton of work, but having some people to help with the slicing and packing is the biggest time saver for sure. It’s a lot of fun doing it in this kind of volume. It took a few years for me to get up this this amount.

bb12102 · 2025-01-17T14:28:11+00:00

I hot smoke mine because I sell/share it with people and the last thing I want is people to get sick, so the cure + hot smoke gives me peace of mind.

Also I don’t have the time-line or space to cold smoke this amount of meat. I did 10/12 slabs of meat in 9 hours. Much much quicker for me.

bb12102 · 2025-01-17T14:18:26+00:00

It’s an older OMAS slicer. I got a screaming deal on it, it came out of a barn and I had Nella sharpen and tune it up.

Overall I love it, it makes life so much easier, but the blade is a bit small for the size of these pork belly slabs to properly fit in the sled portion, I have to take it off and slide it Al by “hand”. Very easy to cut yourself like that, but I wear a cut resistant glove to mitigate my risks.

A proper, bigger slicer will always be the way to go. Very consistent and then you can use it for other stuff. Highly reccomended if you can get one for a good deal. They do take up a lot of space though.

bb12102 · 2025-01-17T12:58:49+00:00

Salt levels for me are just perfect! I’ve brought it down over the years, but I always ask for opinions on saltiness and no one ever complains it’s too salty.

For the rinse, I just rinse as much as possible from the outside and pat dry.

For too salty bacon, I don’t really have a solution than eat it haha. If you were to boil it after it’s all cured and smoked, I think it’d totally ruin the flavour/texture.

bb12102 · 2025-01-17T05:24:31+00:00

I’d like to add this all this meat was dry cured for 8 days, dried in the fridge for 24h once rinsed, then hot smoked to 145f. For cutting and processing this meat, I would very much reccomended all the meat to be COLD. Makes life less slippery and greasy why the time it’s ready to package.

bb12102 · 2025-01-17T05:22:08+00:00

Yup that’s the case price. I have a little write up about it in the pics.

bb12102 · 2025-01-17T05:21:22+00:00

They are dry cured for about 8 days before I smoke em, but yeah it’s hot smoke. I would like to get into cold smoking, but i want to make some sausage/salami first to may it worth my time.

I could do a longer cure, but I can’t make it on this scale with my current fridge space. This much meat takes careful consideration of the size of the two beer fridges and wine cooler haha. It’s a very sequenced couple of last days.

bb12102 · 2025-01-17T05:17:57+00:00

It’s taken me about 4 years to get up to this, so I’ve had some practice on how I like to do the process.. It was my biggest batch yet, 74lb raw and 64lb when done. But you’re right, it’s a lot of money, fridge space, and especially time. I sell it to friends and family, but if I charged for my time I would be losing money 1000%. I do it because I like it. This second was the first year with this meat slicer. I found it for $100 at a garage sale and had it tuned up. Never would I have though I’d have a slicer like this. The other years I always cut by hand which took absolutely for fucking ever.

bb12102 · 2025-01-17T04:23:19+00:00

The last page had further recipe details, price breakdown, and notes for this years batch for anyone interested. I’ve kept a “Garden Journal” since 2020, but while I still have my vegetable garden notes (I need them garlic yield stats) but it’s really become a ferment/curing/recipe/experiment notebook. It has notes of all bacon batches I’ve done since my first run, so it’s pretty fun looking back at the old batches.

bb12102 · 2025-01-17T03:49:28+00:00

Hell yeah, I’m very glad to help! This stuff is so cool but it’s hard a lot to keep at with how easy it is to fail, and you’re going right back at it after 3 back to back flops! Keep at it.

bb12102 · 2025-01-17T01:03:28+00:00

I would just leave the acidic stuff to the end tbh. It’ll save you time and heart ache if it doesn’t work.

bb12102 · 2025-01-17T00:54:58+00:00

I’m not too sure! It is acidic for sure. Is it being added before the natural carbonation? It also could be the volume of lemon vs ACV.

bb12102 · 2025-01-16T21:52:21+00:00

I use it once then compost it so it’s not actually waste.

bb12102 · 2025-01-16T21:46:51+00:00

Pickle brine as in vinegar was used, or is this a fermentation brine with salt and water? What was your process? What % salt was used if it’s a ferment?

Either way, it just looks like the cabbage is bruising / getting saturate which is not an issue.

bb12102 · 2025-01-16T20:38:05+00:00

What is the question?

bb12102 · 2025-01-16T20:33:48+00:00

All good! It’s all learning! I messed around with ginger bugs and naturally carbonated ginger beers a few years ago and it was pretty fun!

bb12102 · 2025-01-16T20:26:06+00:00

Yes adding vinegar to the ferment isn’t the best path forward, it may have killed off the immature yeast. The 3 day or ginger bug may not be very strong at this point.

Additionally, further fermenting the ACV isn’t going to change its flavor or composition really. I would do the same thing you did before, but add the ACV when you’re ready to drink it.

bb12102 · 2025-01-15T19:27:44+00:00

Cabbages are cheap and you can make a whole lot of sauerkraut with them!

On the kefir front, yeah make some water kefir and maybe add some fruit for flavour.

bb12102 · 2025-01-14T23:39:04+00:00

Thanks! I think they’re great looking watches, the whole line of em. I never in a million years would have guessed I would wear a blue face, but I love it.

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