Help with dry curee chorizo

[Nsnyder1988]

Hello.
New to the site and an amateur sausage maker for a couple years. So I made some dry cured "chorizo" in 2017 using (sorry I didn't write down the recipe) pork shoulder, salt, instacure #2, smoked paprika, sweet paprika, grated garlic, red wine, cayenne pepper (powdered) and some crushed up dried Chile de árbol and a small amount of fennel seeds. It turned out well and this year I decided to make it again with better ingredients.
This year was:
2kg meat (30% being pork fat)
Approx 3% salt including approx 1 tbsp pink curing salt #2
46g smoked paprika
35g pimentón
8g powdered cayenne pepper
A bit of grated fresh garlic
7g crushed fennel seeds
200ml wine (messed up, per the recipe it should've been 100ml)
And 8 fresh bay leaves crushed up

The problem I had is that after curing for 8-9 weeks and monitoring the temperature and humidity and trying to adjust it accordingly, it seems that everything was fine. When I sliced it and put it into ziplock bags, approx 1-2 weeks after slicing and placing into said bags, the sausage has seemed to lose all it's reddish/orange color as well as the flavor. Now all I taste is the bay leaves and fennel. The sausage appears to have turned a brown color. Any ideas on what happened to my flavor and nice color or how to fix it for next year? Any tips will be appreciated. Thank you

[herjac]

When I sliced it and put it into ziplock bags, approx 1-2 weeks after slicing and placing into said bags, the sausage has seemed to lose all it's reddish/orange color as well as the flavor.

It sounds like oxidation. The ziplock bags allowed too much exposure to air. Did you slice and bag all the sausage at the same time? You could try keeping the sausages in a container submerged in oil or lard to keep from drying out or vacuum sealed in bags. Remove the sausages as you need them.

[Nsnyder1988]

Thank you for the reply.
Over the course of a couple days I sliced it and bagged it all. Just odd that I had this problem this year yet no problem with this last year. Thank you

[NCPaul]

You may have more consistent results if you weigh the cure # 2. Another option would be to add a tiny amount of sodium ascorbate as an antioxidant.

[Nsnyder1988]

Thank you for your feedback