How to Make Venison Summer Sausage at Home

Short answer:

This is the whole process, deer to sliced chub, written for someone doing it for the first time. I've made summer sausage out of my own deer for a long time and this is the order I do it in. Where another guide on this site covers a step in depth, I'll point you there instead of repeating it.

One thing up front: this page gives you the process and the numbers that matter for safety (the cure, the fat, the temperatures). For the exact seasoning amounts, use a tested recipe. The summer sausage recipes in the DeepWoodz app are free, and they scale every ingredient to the weight of meat you actually have.

How long does venison summer sausage take, start to finish?

When	What you do	About how long
Day 1	Trim, weigh, grind, mix, stuff	3 to 5 hours for a 10 to 25 lb batch
Overnight	Rest in the fridge so the cure spreads	Overnight
Day 2	Bloom (dry the casings at room temp)	2 to 3 hours
Day 2	Step-up smoke to 155°F inside	About 4 to 8 hours
Day 2	Cool, hang, into the fridge	1 to 2 hours
Day 3	Slice, vacuum seal, freeze	Whenever you're ready

The smoke time is the one that moves. Casing diameter, your smoker, the weather and how cold the meat went in all change it. Go by the probe, not the clock.

What you need

• A grinder with a 1/8" plate
• A sausage stuffer (a vertical stuffer is easiest for summer sausage)
• A gram scale (cure gets weighed, never scooped)
• Cure #1 (pink curing salt), seasoning, and ice cold water
• 2.5-inch fibrous casings
• A smoker that can hold 130°F to 170°F, or see how to do it without a smoker
• Two probe thermometers: one in the meat, one at the grate

Step 1: Trim and chill the venison

Summer sausage starts in the field. Get the deer cooled down fast. Wisconsin's Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection says to aim to chill the carcass surface to 40°F or lower within 24 hours, and to pack the cavity with ice or snow in sealed bags if the air is above 40°F. If you're unsure how long yours can hang, read how long can a deer hang.

When you cut it up for grind, trim hard: the hard white fat (deer tallow tastes waxy and doesn't belong in sausage), silver skin, bloodshot meat and anything near the wound channel. What's worth keeping and what isn't is covered in venison trim for sausage. Keep the trim at 40°F or below from here on. If your area tests for CWD, see CWD and venison sausage before you grind a mixed batch.

Step 2: Weigh it and blend 50/50 with pork butt

Venison is very lean, so the fat has to come from somewhere. The standard blend is 50/50 venison to pork butt by weight. A cut is not the same thing as fat: pork butt is about 30% fat and venison brings a little of its own, so a 50/50 blend lands around 17% fat. That's what keeps the sausage moist instead of crumbly. Have a different amount of trim or a fattier pork? Run it through the venison fat calculator, and if you've had dry sausage before, here's why.

Weigh the total meat after blending. Every other number in the recipe is a percentage of that weight.

Total meat	Venison	Pork butt	Cure #1 (0.25%)
5 lb	2.5 lb	2.5 lb	5.7 g
10 lb	5 lb	5 lb	11.3 g
25 lb	12.5 lb	12.5 lb	28.35 g

Cure #1 at 0.25% of the meat weight puts you at 156 ppm nitrite. It is not optional in summer sausage: it spends hours in a warm smoker, and the cure is what protects it. More on that in how much Cure #1 per pound and do you need cure for sausage. Use Cure #1 here, not Cure #2 (the difference).

Step 3: Grind it cold

Cube the meat, spread it on sheet pans and put it in the freezer until it's firm at the edges but not frozen solid. Chill the grinder head and plate too. Grind through a 1/8" plate. Cold meat cuts clean; warm meat smears, and smeared fat is the start of a greasy, crumbly sausage (why sausage fats out).

Step 4: Mix in the seasoning, cure and anything extra

1. Add the dry seasoning to the ground meat and mix to spread it evenly.
2. Dissolve the weighed cure in ice cold water, pour it in and mix until the meat turns very tacky and sticks to your hand when you turn it over. That stickiness is the bind. Under-mixed summer sausage crumbles when you slice it.
3. Fold in cheese, diced jalapenos or a tang ingredient last, by hand.

Binder: optional. The DeepWoodz summer sausage recipes get their bind from cold meat, ice water and a good long mix, with no binder. If you like using one, follow its package rate.

How do you add jalapeno and cheese?

• Cheese: use high-temp cheese in 1/4" cubes. The DeepWoodz cheese recipes use it at 10% of the meat weight, which is 1 lb of cheese per 10 lb of meat. Regular cheese melts out over a long smoke and pools in the bottom of the casing.
• Jalapeno: jalapeno powder goes in with the dry seasoning. Diced jalapenos get folded in at the end; the DeepWoodz recipes that use them run 3 to 4% of meat weight, about 5 to 6 oz per 10 lb. Pat them dry first.
• Fold both in by hand and don't over-mix, or the cheese smears.

For a tested version, Fire Jack Summer Sausage is the jalapeno cheddar one.

Why doesn't my summer sausage have any tang?

Because tang comes from acid, and a plain recipe doesn't have any. You add it with encapsulated citric acid (ECA) at 0.75% of the meat weight or Fermento at 3%, never both. ECA changes the process: it goes in last, gets folded in by hand, and the batch is stuffed and smoked the same day with no overnight rest. All of it is in ECA vs Fermento.

Step 5: Stuff the fibrous casings

Soak the fibrous casings in warm water before stuffing, as the package directs. Pack the stuffer tight to push the air out, then stuff the casings firm. Prick any air pockets you can see. A loose chub turns into a wrinkly, hollow one in the smoker.

What size casing for summer sausage?

The DeepWoodz summer sausage recipes use 2.5-inch fibrous casings (about 65 mm). A 50 mm casing (about 2 inches) works too; it comes up to temperature faster and slices smaller. The schedule and the 155°F finish don't change, only the time does. The casing calculator tells you how much to buy.

How many summer sausages from 10 lb of meat?

A 2.5-inch fibrous casing holds roughly 1.75 lb per foot, so:

Casing (2.5 inch)	Holds about	From 10 lb of meat
12 inches long	1.75 lb	5 to 6 chubs
20 inches long	about 3 lb	3 to 4 chubs

Add a pound of cheese and you'll fill a little more. How tight you stuff also moves it.

Step 6: Do you rest it overnight before smoking?

Yes, for a plain or Fermento batch. Into the fridge overnight so the cure spreads evenly through the meat. Some people rest the mix in a covered tub and stuff the next morning; the DeepWoodz recipes stuff first and rest it in the casing. Either works.

Not for an ECA batch. Once ECA is in, stuff and smoke the same day.

Step 7: Do you hang it to dry before smoking?

Yes. Hang the chubs at room temperature for 2 to 3 hours (the bloom) until the casings feel dry to the touch. Then the first smoker stage, 130°F with the damper open, finishes the drying. Smoke won't take evenly on a wet casing. ECA batches skip the bloom and go straight in.

Step 8: Smoke it to 155°F inside

Stage	Smoker temp	About how long
Dry	130°F, damper open, no smoke	1 hour
Smoke	150°F with smoke	3 hours
Finish	170°F, never higher	Until 155°F inside

Pull it at 155°F internal in the thickest chub. Never let the smoker run above 170°F; that's where fat-out comes from. Put a second probe at the grate, because the number on the dial is often not what the sausage is sitting in. The full reasoning, stalls and all, is in summer sausage internal temp. Using bear or wild hog? That changes the finish to 165°F: see bear and wild hog safety.

Step 9: Ice bath, hang, chill

The moment it hits 155°F, cool it. An ice bath until the inside drops to about 100°F stops the cook, keeps the casing from wrinkling and keeps the cheese from blowing out. It's optional: cooling at room temperature, or outside on a cold day, works too. What matters is that it doesn't sit warm.

Then hang the chubs at room temp for about an hour so the surface dries and the color deepens, and put them in the fridge. Let them chill overnight before you slice. Warm summer sausage drags and the cheese smears.

Step 10: Store it

Slice off what you'll eat this week, vacuum seal the rest and freeze it. How long it keeps in the fridge and freezer is covered in how long does venison sausage last.

Can I use elk, moose or antelope instead of deer?

Yes. Elk, moose and antelope are lean like whitetail, so they go 50/50 with pork butt and follow the same cure, the same schedule and the same 155°F finish. Bear and wild hog are the exceptions: they can carry trichinella and need to reach 165°F.

Which recipe should a first-timer start with?

Start plain. Old Timber Summer Sausage is the classic mustard and black pepper one, and any flaw in your technique shows up there first. Once that's dialed, Fire Jack adds jalapeno and cheddar, and Sunday Bloodies is something you won't find on a store shelf. They're all free in the DeepWoodz app, with every ingredient worked out for the weight of meat you have.

Making snack sticks from the same deer? Same idea, thinner casing, different schedule: snack stick smoke schedule.

Every summer sausage recipe in DeepWoodz runs this process. Enter 8 lb or 47 lb and the seasoning, water, cheese and cure all recalculate, with the cure locked at 0.25%. The built-in smoke timer walks you through the 130, 150 and 170°F stages.

Bottom line

Cold meat, 50/50 with pork butt, Cure #1 at 0.25% weighed on a scale, mixed until tacky, stuffed tight, rested overnight, dried, smoked up gently to 155°F inside, then cooled fast. Get the process right once and every summer sausage after that is just a seasoning change.

Common questions