“It’s like a guy’s cookie exchange,” says Mat Green. This annual no-girls-allowed gathering was borne of Tom Helm’s love of food and genuine affection for family and friends “who might as well be family,” he says. “We’re like a finely tuned machine,” says Green. Koehler takes his spot at the barbecue where he grills the extras to keep everyone fed and also makes sure nobody’s beer glass is empty. Trevor Clarke, Helm’s nephew, and Jamie Niles similarly work the smaller press. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play Then the casing is pinched off and handed to the one or more guys who moves on to weigh, measure, and package the sausage into Ziploc bags for the men to take home. Once the meat is fed through, it’s coiled on a large baking sheet until the casing on that horn is finished. One will crank while the other is on sausage output, putting some back pressure into it to fill the casing properly. Green, Helm’s nephew-by-marriage, and Marty Kovacs, ready the old-school press. And then the participants assumed their usual posts, an assembly line that’s been fine-tuned over the years: Helm is responsible for soaking the pork intestines in warm water before feeding them onto the horns of the sausage press. Helm brought the newer, smaller version that he had his brother build. Marty Kovacs showed up with his grandfather’s cast-iron sausage press. Nobody will publicly out the offender, at least not yet, but he’s been put on notice. “Pretty rough,” agrees event founder Tom Helm. (Still top of mind is the ill-considered moose sausage that one of the guys made a few years ago. Each had 28 pounds of ground meat in a large bowl or container, already mixed with spices and other ingredients from a recipe carefully selected to earn accolades. Last year was the seventh annual sausage party and Koehler needed to ready the space for the six other guys who arrived that day. Atop the beer fridge, improvised by Koehler to accommodate a couple of kegs and outfitted with taps, will be a television tuned to whatever NFL game is on that day. Gone will be the kids’ toys, the yard tools, the empty cases of beer. Every year, by an agreed upon Sunday in December, Scott Koehler will have cleared the detritus from the single-car garage of his home in London, Canada.
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