Casings! Collagen or Natural ?

[ShooterRick]

You folks in the know let me know please. Is there a preference between Collagen or Natural casings. What are the benefits and cons of each? Is it just personal preference or do performance issues guide your choice?

[Texas-Hunter]

As for me I like natural for all my links. Cured Smoked and Fresh. I like the Fibrous casings for larger sausage. Summer Sausage, Bologna.

The advantages to the collagen casings I feel is they are a little tougher than natural they wont bust as easy and are easier to work with than natural.

[morkdach]

are collagen casings edible

[Richtee]

are collagen casings edible

Yes. The fibrous are not. Well, they ARE, but ya would not want to eat 'em. Collegens can be eaten, but I'd be likely to peel them.

I use all natural, unless it's snax stix. Then collegen. And I'm still working on them...sigh.

[ShooterRick]

are collagen casings edible

Yes they are edible. The fiberous casings are not as they usually contain a paper that is coated. This info comes from several web sites I have been looking at.

[Big Guy]

Natural is the way to go. Collagen don't link well and I find them tougher than the natural cases.

[curious aardvark]

weird. The collagen cases I've used are much weaker than natural. you can link if you link as you stuff - carefully, but any other way and they burst.
And to be honest for eating there's no discernible difference I've found (but I don't generally smoke sausage so maybe that toughens them up)

Advantages:
Collagen - total consistency, easy to use, comes in variety of sizes. No preparation hassle.
Natural: considerably more flexible, link any way you like, better for smoked sausage, no blowouts.

Disadvantages:

Collagen - tend to be weak, burst a lot, buggers to link, don't shrink with sausage at low temps.
Natural - fiddly to prepare, size can be quite variable.

Overall I prefer natural and don't use collagen. Sure they're a little fiddly to prepare - but it only takes 10 minutes.
The benefits seriously outweight the any negative aspects.

Edible collagen casing just doesn't stretch, you tend to swear a lot when stuffing colagen casings :-)

[Gunslinger]

Personally I think natural are more forgiving. You can over-stuff a bit. If you over stuff collagen, it's gone. I do like collagen for it's "snap" when you bite into it or break it. Just goes along with the whole snack stick experience.