Started out with some good fresh cubed boneless pork shoulder. Make sure the grinding equipment and meat are cold, before grinding meat through a 3/8 inch grinding plate.

Place ground meat and the rest of the ingredients into a bowl, and keep your bowl set in another bowl of ice while working. This prevents breaking your mixture. Mix all the ingredients extremely well. When all ingredients are well mixed, keep your meat in the fridge until you are ready to stuff in casings.

Stuff sausage into the casings, tie in rings, and hang in a 130 degree F smoker with the vent wide open until the casings are dry. I like to use hickory dowels to hang the sausage in the smoker.

Once the casings are dry, gradually increase the temperature of the smoker to 160-165 degrees F and leave the vent 1/4 open. Add your bisquettes to the smoke generator and apply smoke.

There’s a lot of discussion on how long to smoke. Most whole muscle meats will only soak up 2 hours worth of smoke with seemingly little benefit beyond that.

Others believe sausage benefits from longer smoke. I applied for 4 hours worth of hickory.

Smoke sausage until it reaches an internal temperature of around 152 degrees F.

Remove from the smoker and shower with cold tap water until the internal temperature drops to 110 degrees. Let the sausage hang at room temperature for 30 minutes or so, until the desired bloom is obtained.

Eat right away on a crusty bun with a good mustard or store in your fridge or freezer.