Loadingā¦
28
I hit 5000 pounds of sausage made in a year and I think that's a bad sign
Everyone talks about high output like it's a good thing, but hitting that number made me stop and think. It means we're pushing volume over craft, just cranking out the same basic links day after day. I remember my first year, I made maybe 800 pounds total, but each batch had something new, like a test run with venison and juniper. Now it's just bulk pork shoulder and premixed seasoning. Has anyone else felt like they lost the art when the scale got too big?
3 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In3 Comments
oscarkelly7mo ago
The real bad sign is when you stop naming them. My best batch ever was just called "Tuesday Pork" in my notebook because I was too busy to get clever. You start forgetting which tweak made the breakfast links snap just right, and then you're just following a sheet of paper instead of your gut. That's when the craft part is truly gone, when the recipe matters more than the memory of making it.
6
kevin_sullivan6mo ago
Yeah, my buddy who runs a small brewery had that exact moment. He got a big contract with a grocery chain and spent six months just making tank after tank of the same IPA. He said one day he looked at the schedule and realized he hadn't tasted a test batch in months, just checked numbers against a spec sheet. The money was good but he felt like a machine operator, not a brewer. He ended up dropping the contract to get back to small batches, even though it meant less cash.
1