Bill Dumas goes by many names. Pitmaster. Educator. Television personality. But in Great Falls this weekend, he is going by one more — hometown kid.
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Dumas, known professionally as the Sausage Sensei, is a Texas-based pitmaster and sausage maker whose work has been featured by Texas Monthly barbecue, as well as on the nationally syndicated programs Texas Country Reporter and the TODAY Show. But this weekend's visit to Great Falls is more than a professional engagement. It is a homecoming.
His great-grandmother emigrated from Finland in 1912, drawn to Cascade County by the promise of work in the mines. His mother's entire side of the family is from Sand Coulee. This is his first time back in Cascade County in any real depth since 1994.
"Largely, this is kind of like a homecoming for me," Dumas said.
The connection that brought him back started with a year-long conversation over the internet with Jeff Carlisle — a lifetime Montana resident and barbecue enthusiast who somehow found Dumas online and never let go.
This Saturday and Sunday, the two are hosting hands-on sausage-making classes at The Station District Bar and Eatery on the Missouri River in Great Falls — a venue with its own deep Montana roots. The owners of The Station District also run Willow Ranch in Cascade, raising premium Wagyu beef that will be featured in the class.
"We're looking forward to working with Sausage Sensei this weekend, doing a full three-day sausage festival, if you will. And then, you know, sell some Wagyu out as well," said Tyson Holzheimer of The Station District.
The class covers traditional Central Texas sausage-making techniques — meat selection, formulation, process, and producing consistent, repeatable results — with a heavy Montana influence woven into every recipe.
"So we're going to make sausage, talk about sausage, twist sausage links, everything. It's a veritable wiener symposium," Dumas said.
The menu is pure Montana. Participants will make a Montana huckleberry sausage — which Dumas promises will be intensely purple — and a Montana rhubarb and blue cheese sausage, among other varieties.
"That's right, baby. You starting to sense a theme? Montana," he said.
The class is influenced by the Bavarian and Bohemian meat markets that settled Central Texas — mashed together with Montana ingredients and Dumas' decades of expertise.
Classes run Saturday, August 22nd and Sunday, August 23rd, starting at 9:30 a.m. both days at The Station District Bar and Eatery on the Missouri River in Great Falls. Tickets are $75 per person and include hands-on instruction and eating everything you make. Registration closes when capacity is reached.
"We're going to rock and roll. See you all on the other side," Dumas said.
