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I made Bratwurst today and could not get the casings to work for me. I re hydrated them over 89 minutes as directed. They kept binding on the stuffing horn and tearing when putting them on.

I smoothed flashing and burrs on the plastic horn but that was after I finished with collagen. What is the mojo for using them, I only used 12 feet of so.

I leave about 6" of water inside the casing while threading on the stuffer as lube.

get rid of the plastic tapered tubes, go with SS straight walled tubes they make a big difference with the smaller cases.

I had a similar problem with sheep casings...i'm using a vertical stuffer...I compress the stuffer so that a little sausage mixture protrudes from the tube tip...and then load the casing onto the tube. The "protrusion" seems to grease the casing a little and make it easier to load. Hope it helps

I too use the 'squeeze a bit of sausage mix out' method to help load the casings, but nothing beats soaking them properly and getting water down the inside of them, for easy stuffing.

Some people also add a bit of bicarb of soda to the final rinse which makes them super slippy!

HTH

Phil

Making them slippy (sure you're not PA Dutch?) with the bicarbonate sounds like the thing to try. Hopefully the bicarb-water-smoothing combo will work.

I saw this tip and tried it out yesterday with some hog skins that had been soaking in tepid water, only used a small sprinkle but the skins seemed to slide onto the tube a lot better than before.

Yotmon.

I find nothing more painful than trying to stuff sheep casings. Problem is that I prefer breakfast links more than patties, as does my neighbor (I just charge him a little more for the aggravation). In addition to all the above posts, I find that running a little cool water through each casing before stuffing helps them to slide easier. I do that for all casings, no matter what the size. I'll certainly the baking soda next time as well.

Modernist Cuisine proposes to add 2% sodium tripoliphosphate to the rinse water to make the casings really pliable and suple, but I have never tried. This is one of the phosphates you can use in your sausage mixture too, as getting the ingredient just for the soaking doesn't seem to make much sense.

Sheep casings are very tender, to begin with. Well-made stainless steel stuffer tubes are more sanitary and smoother than plastic, easier to clean and sterilize, and easier to load. Well worth the switch. A pinch of baking soda in the last rinse makes pork and sheep casing easier to load. A little ball of meat extruded from the end of the stuffer tube, over which the casing has to slide, makes loading easier for a couple of reasons, I think - lubrication and it also forces the casing to expand before the casing comes in contact with the tube, itself. Keeping your casing and stuffer tube well-lubricated makes a difference, too. All these things, taken together, should make working with sheep casing much easier.