In this article you will find everything about smoking sausages. I show you which smoking variants there are, how they work, what equipment you need and which sausages are suitable for smoking

At the end I have a few recipes for you.

I hope you enjoy reading through them!

The different smoking methods

There are three different types of smoke, which are distinguished by their temperature

Cold smoke. Warm smoke and hot smoke.

Basically, all types of raw sausage are cold smoked. Cold smoke has the best preservation properties.

Warm smoking takes place at a: temperature of 30 to 50 °C. However, in contrast to the two other smoking variants, it is used rather rarely.

At a temperature of 60 to 120 °C one speaks of hot smoking. The sausage is not only smoked, but also cooked.

I have now written down some more information about the two most popular variants…

Cold smoking sausage

As the name suggests, cold smoking does not rely on heat

The smoked product is preserved rather than cooked by smoking it at a temperature of 15 – 25 °C for a longer period of time.

A smoking process takes about 10 – 12 hours and can be done several times.

Classically, the meat is cured before cold smoking.

Here you can find detailed instructions about cold smoking.

Hot smoking sausage

Hot smoking is much faster than cold smoking. This is mainly due to the temperature.

The most common temperature for sausage is between 70 -75 °C. Depending on the size and thickness of the sausage, the process takes about 30 – 60 minutes.

Often the sausages are also scalded afterwards to ensure that they are completely cooked through.

You can usually find the exact times in the recipes or adjust them to taste.

When to use which smoking method?

The smoking method depends on the type of sausage.

In principle, raw sausages are always cold smoked, as they are not cooked. This would be sausages such as salami, mettwurst or smoked bratwurst. The same applies to ham.

Cooked sausages such as liverwurst or blood sausage can also be cold-smoked after cooking.

Boiled sausages such as Vienna sausage or Krakauer can also be hot smoked excellently, since they have to be cooked anyway.

In general, you will always find in the recipes how long and how you have to smoke the sausage.

What you need for smoking sausage

You don’t need much equipment besides the grinder, stuffer & casings

I have written down the 3 most important utensils for you

Smoker

The most important first. You need a room for smoking. Since I assume that you do not have your own smokehouse, a smoker is best suited for this.

In this you can smoke both hot and cold .

The chamber holds the smoke inside, ensuring that the sausage can absorb the flavor very well.

There are several types of smokers, which differ both in heating and construction.

To smoke sausage, the best oven is one in which you can hang the sausage from the top

I also recommend heating with gas, as it is easier to control than with fire.

For cold smoking you need something else instead of gas heating, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Smoking flour, smoking chips or economy brandy

In order for the smoke to develop in the oven, you need something that smokes. This can be smoker’s flour, smoker’s chips or economy brandy.

Some people think there is THE BEST type of wood to smoke (One wood for red meat and another for fish, etc.)

Even though there are some differences in taste here, I personally wouldn’t put too much stock in the claims.

The important thing is that you do not use resinous woods such as beech. Oak, Alder, Willow and Birch and good other hardwoods (e.g. fruit and walnut woods) are used.

It is important that your incense only glows and does not start burning. If it does, the temperature will get out of control and the sausage can quickly taste burnt.

For cold smoking: cold smoke generator

If you want to cold smoke then you need a smoking device.

It prevents all your smoking flour from burning at once or uncontrollably

It ensures that a constant amount of smoke is emitted over a longer period of time and that the temperature remains the same.

For this, you must stuff the smoking flour very tightly into the device so that there are no air holes

Finally, I now have a few sausage recipes for smoking for you….

5 delicious sausage smoking recipes

Smoking Vienna sausages

Vienna sausages are known all over the world. They are also often called Frankfurters. Here you can find my recipe. I used an old recipe by using only beef

Smoking Krakauer

Here I show you how to make Krakauer yourself. They are easy to prepare and taste just heavenly.

Smoked bratwurst

You like smoked bratwurst? Then you can find my recipe here. The preparation is super easy and they taste just heavenly.

Pfefferbeisser cold smoked

Here you can find the pepper bites recipe

Cabanossi hot smoked

Click here for the Cabanossi recipe

100+ more sausage recipes

You can find over 100 more sausage recipes here.