Homemade Sausage Making

I know this is not a main subject for this forum, however, what better place to start then with the meat professionals.

Does anyone have any degree of experience in the meat aging of primal cuts?

If so, can you or anyone recommend a book on the subject. My son mostly, but I as well am interested in the subject.

I have only done it a few times using the UMAi Dry bags. To me it is a waist of money drying out a good piece of meat that you have to trim away all the hard cover so I have stopped doing aged beef.

I hear what saying, but addicted to that wonderful nutty flavor you get from a good aged steak.

It's all about the biology of meat ! What changes occur with the chemistry going on . Aging beef requires the right humidity and temperature . Then there's the whole debate regarding wet aging, meaning to let the beef primals or cuts sit in the cryovac bags that they came in from the proccesing plant. Then there's dry aging where the sides are hung on the rail or the primals hung or put on racks in a cooler .

You want good fat cover on something you are dry aging . After dry aging for a certain period of time you will only need to remove a certain amount of exposed fat and dried out meat.

It costs money to age beef, storage, electricity, shrinkage which increases price per pound .
Aging IMHO does create a better flavour and tenderness but that just my opinion .
to each his own.
Knifeman

I agree with what Knifeman said about the fat. The layer of fat is like a casing on a salami and without it you can have problems.

Some people will even wrap the hanging carcass with cheesecloth.

The most authentic dry aging I ever saw was done by a butcher in Alabama - forget his name. He would have quarters and halves hanging in his cooler and you were given a choice on how aged the meat was. Some of it looked pretty rank with mold and stuff growing all over it. Some liked it some didn't. I liked it myself and would say it was some of the best beef I've ever eaten but I'm not sure if the trouble is worth the squeeze.

This last year I used faux aging on some beef and found it very good and a lot less trouble than "real aging".

I totally love the taste of aged beef, a good cut aged right, will have this wonderful buttery flavor. I guess some of us have a more delicate,

This is not something that I getting into, I have an up scale butcher shop that sells great aged beef, at $27 lbs US