The Original Dry Bag Steak | Make Artisan Dry Age Steak at Home › Forums › UMAi Dry® Forum Questions › General Questions › Charcuterie/Salumi › Charcuterie/Salumi
The only sure way (for the home processor ) to know if the culture is viable and working is to be able to check the Ph. Using the color is a good indicator but only a guess on the final Ph.
Bottled or distilled water would be a better (inexpensive) choice to mix the culture with.
What type of sugar did you use?
For more info on the culture and possible problems go to page 38 in the Bactoferm meat manuel .
http://netropolitan.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Chr-Hansen-Meat-Brochure-141009.pdf
Also you never dried the sausage in the fridge and tried it???? Many of the finest salames in the world are made without using cultures.
And a real safe bet drying under normal refrigerator temps.
Also if you added 2.8% salt and 0,25% cure #2 the meat should not have spoiled that quickly. I would look more at the meat quality, processing temp, ect. , for a problem.
Its probably best to start out with an all pork or pork + beef salame and not something like duck or game meat.
It is definitely not the Umai process or product that caused your failure