Look at my big sausage!

Another summer holiday=more sausage. Needless to say, there are 2 different sausages here. The one on the outside is an apricot, rosemary, garlic, vermouth sausage. On the inside, we have a hot pepper, anise seed sausage. I know you are thinking the apricot sausage may seem a little challenging. I cannot take credit for the idea entirely. While watching "Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie," a segment was filmed at Salumeria Biellese, which I have frequented on more than one occasion. Anyway, at the end of the segment a fresh sausage was being eaten, it was apricot, garlic and brandy sausage, sounded good to me. So, I put my own spin on this odd sausage. However, it sure doesn't taste odd, it's friggin good, dare I say great. Perfect salty, sweet, with a slight rosemary taste in the background. The other sausage is very good as well, not overwhelminhly hot, although it's color would have you believe differently. Once again, back to the well of using that same dried Calabrian chilli powder, to the tune of 1.3%! One thing I am having trouble with, even with the use of pink salt, is gray sausage. It turns gray almost instantly, even as it's being stuffed. I used more pink salt this time around, about .2%, still gray. Has anyone else had this problem? It seems I have this issue every time I make fresh sausage. Doesn't affect the flavor, at least.