Meat grinder size suggestions

I worked one summer in a meat market and made sausage almost daily. Helpful things are plastic meat lugs, a foot switch for the grinder. We had a very large grinder. We would run the meat once, into the lug, mix the seasoning, and run a second time. This time it was cased. Soak the casing for 24 hours before use in water and put food grade mineral oil in a spray bottle to help with lubrication on the casing. The hardest thing was running the meat into the casing and not busting it open. Just a little practice and I was turning sausage out like crazy

Unless you're doing multiple deer at a time the .5 will grind faster than you will be able to feed it. I made sausage for the first time this year and there are lots of other things to spend the extra money on besides a bigger grinder. You won't notice any difference. Grinding is the easy part. Deboning, trimming, cubing, stuffing, bagging, and cleaning are what a deer processor gets paid for.

We use a 1/2 horse and it works fine. As mention grinding isn't the proble. It's all the cleanup and prep work. Cut your meat into 3/4" strips as long as possible, they feed better that way. Instead of spending money on more grinder I'd get some bus pans and If you plan on making sausage get a sausage stuffer. If you still like grinding meat/making sausage, upgrade later.

quote:

---

Grinding is the easy part. Deboning, trimming, cubing, stuffing, bagging, and cleaning are what a deer processor gets paid for.

---

I completely agree with this and I still use a manual crank grinder. It is all you need for one deer at a time, so a half horsepower should be plenty.

quote:

---

Btw, I think there is a market for a equipment rental place to rent meat processing equipment like grinders, commercial vac sealers, meat lugs, etc. It could be rented as a package deal

---

That's not a bad idea. When we bought our office building it had a commercial kitchen as part of a cafeteria from years ago. I've often thought about opening it up to the public for game processing but I'm too afraid of the liability.

quote:

---

Instead of spending money on more grinder I'd get some bus pans and If you plan on making sausage get a sausage stuffer.

---

Bingo. No matter what the grinder box says, it will never be as good at stuffing as an actual stuffer. Mine is worth it's weight in gold.

Really all you get with the larger grinders is the larger neck and allows you to put bigger cubes. The easiest part of grinding meat is cutting meat into smaller cubes.

My 1/2 hp with a #8 weston can eat deer faster than I can feed it. Takes longer to clean than grind even when doing a few deer.

Now if you were wanting to grind frozen stuff or bones then get some HP.