Commercial Drying Room for Dry Ageing
There are many reasons why a commercial drying room is beneficial for businesses. First, it dries food quickly, increasing production. Second, it reduces spoilage because it removes excess water rapidly. Third, it preserves the quality of the food by preventing bacterial growth.
OUR CLIENT
Super Butcher Eagle Farm
Brisbane Super Butcher dry ages meat. They have been using the traditional salt method for dry ageing within their cold room for many years.
They contracted Humiscope to convert their existing commercial cold room, into a dry room specifically designed for age drying meat because of moisture and condensation issues.
Drying Room Dehumidifier
Humiscope chose an Air Dry 270 Desiccant Dehumidifier which removes moisture and maintains a consistently low relative humidity. Humiscope designed the system to run at 3°C and 75% relative humidity (RH).
Humiscope installed the dehumidifier by retrofitting the system seamlessly with the cold room’s current HVAC equipment.
Store Manager, Danny Neilson has been in the industry for over 40 years in Brisbane, New South Wales and Victoria. He has been at the Eagle Farm site for over seven years.
““This is by best set up I’ve ever seen. It has sped up our curing time and increased the quality of the meat.””
Humiscope is a group of professionals all with varied portfolios and years of industry experience. We have several clients for whom we have designed a commercial drying room.
“The drying room conditions have improved the quality and taste of the meat and increased our yield to market, as less meat needs to be trimmed during the aging process.”
We design and build drying rooms on site from the ground up.
We build drying rooms at our factory and deliver it on a skid base, ready to operate. We also convert existing rooms into a fully sealed and ducted drying rooms.
THE CHALLENGE
Prior to contacting Humiscope, the Butcher used the traditional salt method to absorb the moisture. This method reduced the moisture some but required 25 kg of salt each week and there were continual issues with water pooling in the cold room floor, creating a hazard for staff
Issues with Cold Room
Additional wage costs to remove and replace the salt each week
A lot of the outer layer of meat needed to trimmed over the 30 to 60 day age drying time
Wet puddles caused by moisture build-up
Corrosion of the room as the salt would eat into any metal
Temperature and humidity fluctuations still occurred
Safety concerns for staff (wet floors)
Condensation and moisture build up in a drying room used to dry age meat is not ideal. Different cuts of meat need to be dried for a minimum of 30 days. From 30 days on, the outer layer of the meat needs to be trimmed, reducing the products mass, therefore reducing the cost to market.
To optimally dry meat, a continued balance between water evaporation on the meat’s surface and extraction of water from the deeper layers is required.
Basically, the surface area cannot become too dry while there is still a high moisture content inside. Dry surfaces hinder further evaporation of moisture which leads to the meat not drying evenly and can cause spoilage.
SOLUTION
With any drying room for meat drying, the room should remain, as the name implies, dry. However, it is storing meat, so the room also has to remain very cold – below 4° C.
The ideal conditions for the ageing process lies in creating and maintaining warm, dry air of low humidity and minimal temperature fluctuations. A temperature range between 1 to +3°C, air speed of 0.2-0.5m/s and relative humidity between 75-85% are the ideal conditions for meat during the ageing process.
Using a Desiccant Dehumidifier within a cold drying room removes moisture and maintains a consistently low humidity.
The improved conditions within the commercial drying room have significantly reduced the time required to age the meat without reducing the quality of the meat.