The Circle M Meats Dry Aging Process
Why Age Beef?
- To put it simply, aging improves tenderness and flavor.
- The wet aging process tenderizes the loin, giving you that delectable fork-tender texture you want in a steak.
- The dry aging process is all about that flavor. Dry aging intensifies the flavor, giving the steaks a robust, umami-like flavor profile.
What Is Beef Aging?
- Storing a carcass or whole muscle cuts at regulated temperatures and humidity to improve flavor and tenderness.
- Shrinkage does occur during the aging process – in short, the longer you age, the greater the weight loss.
- Dry-aged beef does not spoil because of the amount of environmental control it is put under. Moisture levels and bacteria are carefully watched, ensuring that only “good” bacteria is growing and helping the beef to dry age.
Our State-of-the-Art Dry Aging Room
- Temperature and humidity controlled
- Our dry aging room is temperature and humidity controlled with dual back up systems in place and an innovative temperature and humidity monitoring system that alerts all employees if a failure occurs.
- Sanitation Practices
- We don’t use chemicals to clean our dry aging room. The meat absorbs odors put off by cleaning products and contaminants from improper sanitation practices. If blood ends up on the floor, we use water and a USDA approved alkaline cleaning solution to spot clean. We take special care to ensure this doesn’t happen by using absorbent pads to account for any blood drip that occurs during the initial dry aging stage.
- All loins are dry aged on sanitized stainless steel carts. After a cart’s contents are processed, we thoroughly sanitize the cart and cycle it back into the dry aging room to be used for aging a future new batch of loins.
- We use an industrial UV light as an added measure of sanitation. UV light eliminates mold, bacteria and mildew, i.e. the “bad bacteria” that isn’t human consumable.
- Our dry aging room is access controlled and only opened when necessary. As our facility is USDA inspected, we follow all USDA protocols throughout our facility, including our dry aging room. These practices include wearing clean processing only boots, smocks, hair nets, etc.
- Process
- We weigh loin carts weekly to log and study shrink.
- Once the dry aging process is complete, our meat cutters expertly trim and hand cut every steak.
The Circle M Meats Dry Aging Process
- Step 1: Wet Age – improves tenderness
- Primal loins, such as ribeye, bone-in rib and strip, are vacuum sealed and placed in a 35 degree cooler for a minimum of 30 days.
- Step 2: Dry Age – improves flavor
- Loins are removed from vacuum seal, placed on stainless racks in our temperature and humidity controlled dry aging room.
- We dry age in increments of 21, 30 and 45 days (depending on the cut and what we need in stock). We can do extended aging upon request.
- We can dry age whole loins for customers as well. Please contact us for more information!
- Step 3: Packaged in Sous Vide Rated Barrier Film
- High barrier means air can not penetrate the meat, extending the shelf life of our products.
- Our thermal forming packing machine uses a mechanism to vacuum seal the product while simultaneously creating a strong seal on the package.
- Sous vide ready means you can cook all of our products in the package! All you need is a sous vide cooker or immersion circulator and you can drop your steaks in – allowing for the perfectly cooked steak every time.
