sausage hog casings- what am i doing wrong

[BabsBBQ]

I made a batch of breakfast sausage and bratwurst using the #2. A couple of things evidently did not go right. After I stuffed them, I put them in the fridge overnight. I used the hanging rods. The time for most of the sausage indicated 3 hours. A couple of weeks ago I smoked some store brats at 225 and they only took 45 mins. I thought with these, i would lower the temp to 190 to see if that would allow for a longer smoke. It did, but only to 1 hr 15min. How do you get to the 3 hour mark? I also used apple juice to add moisture. Another issue is the casings. These came out almost rubbery and chewy. Is there any way to fix this batch after the fact. I noticed that many of the pictures posted show the using the racks instead of the rods. Do the rods make them too close together? Is it the brand of casing i am using? do I need to dry it longer? I would appreciate any suggestions.

 

[old sarge]

I’ve never done sausage. Have you read through the sausage section?  Might be an answer is there. Wish I could be more help.

 

[BabsBBQ]

I did review many of the posts about sausage smoking. This gave me information about the drying overnight, temperature , Etc. Many of the sausage post dealt with summer sausage and snack sticks. I am still baffled by the temperature setting and the number of hours to smoke. Most of the other  meats that I've smoked so far  have been fairly consistent  with  the times and temperatures. looked in that section again this morning and I did find one comment about not having the water pan when doing the sausage. So maybe that is where this partially went wrong.