Hassocks butcher creates exotic sausages to give customers a taste of foreign travel

Andy Twine owner of A Twine Butchers in Keymer Road, aims to create 25 different flavours that correspond to summer holiday destinations.

“The idea is to try and give you the flavours that you’d get abroad in a sausage, said Andy, 34.

“It’s all down to the ingredients, the herbs and spices and the liquids you mix in like red wine,” he added.

Some of the sausage ideas Andy has in mind are: mango for the Caribbean, red wine and garlic for Toulouse, Peking duck for China, German Bratwurst, South African Boerewors, an American cheeseburger sausage, merguez for Morocco and a slightly spiced doner lamb sausage for Turkey.

”The one I’m looking forward to trying is the cheeseburger,” said Andy, adding that the sausage will contain cheese, gherkins and burger sauce.

Andy said he got the idea after realising how much he wanted to go abroad for a holiday at a time when most foreign travel is restricted because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

He also said it was to give him something new to do.

“We tend to make the same flavours week in, week out, and it’s nice to make something different and put a challenge in there,” he said.

Andy added that people had been looking for different foods to cook at home as well.

He intends to make the sausages before the next bank holiday weekend (May 29-31) and sell them on the Friday and Saturday.

If it goes well he said he will sell the exotic sausages throughout the following week too.

Andy lives in Hassocks with his wife and two children and opened his business more than three years ago.

He said business last summer was good and that he only shut for a couple of weeks early in the pandemic while he worked out how to open safely with plastic screens and other measures.

“At the moment we’re just waiting for the sunshine to come out so we can roll out our barbecue stuff,” Andy said.

A Twine Butchers’ usual sausage selection includes: plain pork, pork and sage, Cumberland, Lincolnshire, Old English pork and leek, pork and apple, hog roast (sage, onion and apple), pork and chile, and pork and garlic.