First time using drybags

[Mark]

Hi and great forum here.

I have just received my drybags and im a bit confused to what cut of meat i should try first. I have read a lot of people here do the ribeye, but i was thinking of just doing a rump as that will be less costly if i stuff it up. Is it worth doing rump or will i be dissapointed.

Thankyou.

[Ron Pratt]

Hello Mark!
Welcome aboard. I understand your basic question. I just hope you are not offended by my open and honest reply. People become advocates and literally “hooked” on dry aged beef after experiencing the wonderful taste of dry aged steaks at great steakhouses. Once you have acquired the taste then you realize why those businesses charge so much. Then you discover some how some where that you can dry age beef at home for a fraction of the price that those steakhouses charge for their dry aged beef.

Still with me?

The better the cut and quality of beef that you start with to age the better the results. Then there is the time factor…if you plan to commit 30 – 45 – 60 days to age your sub primal why start with a marginal piece of beef?

Sure, you could age a rump roast, but why bother?

Ron

[Mark]

Thank you Ron,

I will be going to do ribeye for 45 days now and i can totally understand where you are coming from.
I think the more reading i do on the internet tends to throw me in differant directions, but i will start with quality product and hopefully get the results i want.

Thanks,
Mark.

[Mark]

Well, I have started my dry aging and I went with the scotch fillet.
I am on the 11th day today and I am taking a picture every day, I will also weigh it every 10 days to see what is going on. I plan on aging it for 45 days, but then I read you go to 30% weight loss. Is it better to go by days or by weight lost??
At this stage the meat is losing 50g a day (500g in 10 days) but by my calculations my 3.5kg of meat should end up at about 2.4kg.

Thanks,
Mark.

[Jim]

Mark,

Correct me f I am wrong, but I think you may be confusing Dry Curing Charcuterie with Dry Aging of Beef. The weight loss requirement of 30% or more is for dry cured meats like capicola, pancetta, etc.
Dry aged subprimals of beef like your scotch filet or as we call it ribeye will loose much less weight during aging and there really isn’t any minimum weight loss requirement. In fact, if your subprimal were to loose 30% of its original weight it wouldn’t be that good. The crust that forms on the outside of beef during the first week or two prevents excessive weight loss and and that is a good thing for a steak.

[Ron Pratt]

+1 what Jim said! With a ribeye I have found my total loss weight averages 21% after both 45 and 60 days. What bothers me though is all your intended handling of the bagged meat. You are running the risk of puncturing he bag. I personally just bag mine, place it on a wire rack and never even touch it again until the end of the drying period. Good luck and please report back at the en! Ron

[Mark]

Thankyou for your information,

I must have read the wrong info on the weight loss, which is good as that means more meat to eat.
I am taking a picture every day, but doing it in the fridge without moving it.
When im finished i will post a full report and pics, (wont boor you with 45 pics, will just put up every 5th day).

Thankyou,
Mark.

[Tony Erne]

I will very rarely eat non-dry aged beef again. I say rarely because I may need to eat a regular non-aged steak because of poor planning on my part. I now have 30+ steaks on hand so I can eat meat quite often. I have two primal dry aging, with two week spacing.
The truth as I see it is to check all weights. The starting weight, the trimming (bark) weight, the trimming of (excess) fat weight, the water (loss) weight, and finally the steak weight you will eat. Subtract all the weight from your start weight and you will see a very big difference on what other posters claim as a weight loss. Most claim only water loss it’s a lot more than water. Compare apples to apples the weight of all components changes everything.

[Ron Pratt]

Tony, anytime I post my weight loss I state it as a percentage and it is the weight loss from when I weighted it before bagging to the dried state before trimming. I personally think that is a better measurement when selecting the number of days to age in the future. Besides being a proven benchmark for me I feel the trimming loss is just a given that I don’t even fret about! I mean if someone is going to be upset about the trimming loss than they shouldn’t be dry aging anyway. Ron

[Tony Erne]

Hey Ron thanks for the support. When I started this journey of dry aging beef I found your wealth of experience to be very helpful. I only fret when I cook my beef to long :dry: The whole process of weight and bench marks can be changed up or down. Some eat the trimmings/bark I don’t, some dry past 45 days I try not too. One of the things I find very interesting is the way readers interrupt what they read in many different ways, just like how people weight things. Bark on, Bark off. It’s a matter of taste don’t you think. I watched a video on a chief cutting, cooking and serving a dry aged rib eye with the bark on , I like too trim it so I don’t have to fret over cutting off the bark after plating the steak. It’s really a matter of taste.

Have a great day and thanks for your comments, their always welcome.

[Mark]

At day 40, all going well.
Cant wait to see how its all going on day 45. (I have pics on everyday In the fridge) and weight on day 1, 10 , 20 , 31 , ( would have taken weight on day 30, but was fishing) and will take weight on day 45.
Sorry about numbers, but work in the food industry and love to know whats happening. Will share my experience here soon.

Cheers,
Mark.

[Mike]

I am hoping that someone on this forum can help me. I started a dry aging process about 3 weeks ago and followed the instructions included. however, I think I should have probably let some of the natural juice from the roasts drain a little better than the instructions would have you believe. Basically about half of the juice has “evaporated” leaving still quite a bit of juice in the bag. None of the meat has started to adhere to the bag to be honest. I am wondering if it is an issue to cut open the bag, let the meat dry a little bit more and re-seal the bag. I have about another two weeks before I plan to serve the meat, but suppose I could let it go longer.

I e-mailed the contact us link, but haven’t received a response yet. I was hoping some of the users may have an idea or if they have seen this where the bags don’t really release the moisture from the meat.

Thanks in advance,

Dinger

[Ron Pratt]

Hello Mike – welcome to the forum! Sorry to hear of your problem. To help you I need to ask some questions. On the end that you sealed do you have excess bag material sufficient in length to make a small cut to drain the moisture and then reseal it? At 3 weeks the bag should have bonded with the meat unless it was extremely wet all over. Since you say it hasn’t bonded tells me you have tried to pull the bag from the meat – right? In that case then you must not have had a good seal to begin with as the vacuum process would have made the UMAi Dry material quite tight to begin with so pulling it loose now makes me question the sealing. Hasn’t the meat turned somewhat brown in color? Ron

[Mike]

Hi Ron,

Thanks for the quick response. there is plenty of bag material on the end of the roast. I actually cut my ribeye roast in half to do a side by side comparison of a few different dry aging techniques.

No – I haven’t tried to pull the bag from the meat. I can just see that the meat is still red like a cryovac bag. I didn’t turn the bag inside out or anything like that, so it should be expelling moisture. It is actually expelling moisture because the inside of the refrigerator Im using does have condensation on in. I wipe it every couple of days. for the Sirloin roast that I dry aged, it did seal very well, but that was the one where I followed the directions and just move the roast from the cryovac bag directly into the dry bag. there was a lot of juice in the bag, but I figured I was following the directions so it should expel the moisture. the Ribeye that I sealed didn’t get as good of a seal, but was dryer to start with since I cut it in half. From what I had read and seen, I didn’t re-seal the bag because most of the roast was touching the bag, so I figured I would let it start that way. I even rigged up a small fan to try and move more air around and expel more moisture.

I was going to just try to re-seal them, but I figured that I would check into this forum to see if anyone had similar problems.

[Jim]

Hi Mike,

If you are getting condensation inside the fridge, you may be using a fridge that doesn’t get rid of the moisture like a regular modern household fridge would.
If you can imagine, the meat will loose 20% of its weight or so during aging, so like a 15 lb ribeye will expel about 3 lbs of water into the fridge. That is almost more than 1/3 of a gallon of water that has to go somewhere and sounds like it is all staying inside your fridge.
Modern fridges circulate air around and constantly remove the moisture thereby allowing the meat to age properly. If your fridge does not remove the moisture, it all stays inside the fridge and creates a very high humidity environment that does not allow the meat in UMAi Dry to dry properly. Even if you use the fan inside, all it would do is to move that humid air around the fridge. We would recommend moving the meat to a different fridge, like a full size one.

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