Bag with air and mold

[Mark Schwartz]

I bet this has been asked a lot but couldn’t quickly find an answer to my questions. I have a 20lb brisket that has been aging for 30 days. I plan on aging it another 30 days. The bag started off with a good seal but has since lost almost all contact. I think I might have had some issues with the temperature in my fridge but not 100% sure. I have since corrected that. The meat has small patches of mold on it. I believe the bark has formed the correct way. There isn’t a bag smell coming from it.

Question – should I just leave this along and let us keep going…OR….should I pull it out and rebag it? If I rebag, should I try to remove any of the mold with vinegar or just leave it? If I rebag, do I need to get it wet again?

Thanks in advance!

[Thea]

No smell is a good thing. Rebagging meat after the surface has dried is a waste of a bag. By 30 days you should have a good, from bark. Hopefully that is reassuring. Now on to the sticky issues.
Mold will not spontaneously grow within the bag unless the meat surface was “inoculated” during the transfer from the processor packaging into UMAi Dry®. The seal on the UMAi Dry® is really pretty irrelevant, as long as there was lots of gooey moisture for the UMAi Dry® membrane to adhere to when first applied.
That said, even if there is some “inoculation,” it will generally only grow if the fridge is either too warm or too humid.
Are you aging in a regularly used modern frost free kitchen refrigerator located in a room temperature environment?
If yes, is the mold growth white? If yes, keep an eye on it. If it expands or begins to change color, labor the drying, trim to fresh red meat.

[Mark Schwartz]

This is interesting. I have read a lot of other responses about mold and bags not being attached and most of the answers has always been that if it will past the sniff test, it should be ok. When I state temperature issues. I found that my fridge has a 6 degree temperature differential (if that is what it is called). It was set at 36 and sometimes it would get to 42 before it would kick back back on. Most of the time it was well in the 36 range but might have floated to 42 for short periods of time. With this information and the fact that it doesn’t smell bad, you would still basically recommend to toss it?

[Mark Schwartz]

This is probably my 8th time using these bags and never had an issue before. I used the recommended process of washing the cryo bag and inserting it into the Umai bag to get the meat into the Umai bag.

The fridge is an industrial merchandiser. I just found out about the 6 degree temperature range today. It would have never been about 42 degrees.

There are some white spots but some are green. It is not all over it but spots here and there.

To pour gas on the fire, I also have a $200 prime rib eye roast in the same fridge. that has a pretty good seal and bark…but I also see some green spots on that.

Ultimately, if I do a very good job of trimming, would you still have concerns?

[Thea]

Green is never a good sign as the mold begins to penetrate the meat at that point.
Of course, it’s up to you, but it seems there is too much humidity in the fridge if you have mold growth, and it’s going green.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

[Author]

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