for the Sausage makers - a home made incubator box

I have been making cured/airdried sausages and salami for a couple of years now and always was fiddling around with some homebrewn setup in the oven to hold the temp at ~ 90F for 15 hours or so to get the fermentation of the added Starter Cultures going..

something like this:


well I finally got of my case and constructed a incubator box like this:



all you need is a 4x8 sheet of Aluminum clad OSB (7/16 inch),
some framing wood (1 1/2 x 3/4 inch,
a line voltage switching thermostat and a wall box to mount it on,
a light socket with a heavy duty 70W lightbulb,
box of drywall screws,
some electric cord and hardware (hinges and lock)
couple of 1/2 inch dowels cut to the size to fit in your dryer.

here you get the idea..

I measured the inside of my dryer to cut the dowels to the size
so they slide in the rails of the dryer ( a peltier type cooling, college fridge)



and sized the incubator box accordingly so I could hang the dowels in there.. assembled the box with the Aluminum clad facing the inside!!





mounted the thermostat and wired it to the 70W light bulb on the bottom..







I cut a removable piece (for easy cleaning) and drilled holes in it on one side (away from the light) - to allow heat distribution and placed it above the lightbulb..



here you see a load ready to go...



set the temp - close the door - and the light will switch on and off to keep the desired temp in the box in the box

chicagokp said:

Thanks for the instruction. That looks great. How does the air flow or does that matter? At the fermentation step are you only looking for warmth?

Click to expand...

Airflow does not matter during this step - (and hot air rises- that's why I put the light on the bottom..:mod it's the constant temp ~ 90F that gets the Starter culture going during these 15 or so hours.....
after that I move the sausage in the drying chamber with a lower temp ~ 55 F anyway..

Airflow is more important during the drying cycle but I get that in my peltier cooler from the built in Fan.

I noticed that now the Sausage is hanging -and not stacked up on top of each other like before in the oven- that the coloring is a lot better after the time in the incubator - I think the more even warming up of all sides of the sausages has something to do with that.