Farmer Seeks Research on Dry Aged Beef

Is Dry Aging More Nutritious, More Easily Digested?

by Chris Kerston, Farm Manager, Chaffin Family Orchards

Chris Kerston

I have been the Chaffin Orchards sales manager for the last few years.  The majority of my background is with beef cattle but I was always enamored with diversity, enterprise stacking, and homesteading.  I was a long time fan of Polyface and Joel Salatin.  My plan was to apply for Joel’s intern program and spend a season in Virginia.  My wife agreed she would stay and keep our ranch running.  Right around this time we found out she was pregnant.  So we scrapped the internship plan and started looking for a job on a holistic diversified farm somewhere more in the Western region.  I looked up and down the coast and as far as Montana, Wyoming, and New Mexico.  Had some great job offers but didn’t really find the kind of symbiotic farming I was looking for.

Around that time I went to an event locally here where Jerry Brunetti and Will Winters were the featured speakers, this was also my first exposure to Weston Price.   Kurt and Carol Chaffin-Albrecht who own Chaffin Orchards were in attendance.  Carol started telling me about all the stuff they were doing and I was amazed.  Then she told me that she had 2,000 acres and I fell in love.  Finally I had found someone who was truly integrating multiple enterprises on the farm in a saleable scale.  The farm raises grassfed beef, lamb, wool, goat, chicken, eggs, olive oil, jam, jerky, in addition to year round fresh orchard fruit from about 40 different varieties most of which are stonefruits and citrus.  The farm runs on a skeleton crew.  We typically operate with 5 full time employees and a handful of occasional part time employees to grow and direct market all of our crops.  We do not deal with brokers here.  I was lucky enough that Kurt and Carol were looking for someone to handle PR and help out at farmers markets but they needed someone with a farming background.  I was a business marketing major in college so it was a great fit.

Chaffin Farm Cattle on Pasture

I have been to every major beef event in the Western U.S. both for grassfed beef and conventional beef.  In all of my travels I have never had better beef than Chaffin’s, not even the beef I was growing myself.  There are a couple things that Chaffin does differently than your average grassfed beef operation.  For one we raise smaller framed cattle that still finish it 14-17 months.  We only harvest once a year in the spring time when the rangeland grasses are the most abundant and most nutritious.  We have really mild high brix grasslands here.  Then finally our USDA butcher has agreed to dry age the entire carcass for a minimum of 21 days, often as long as 28 days.  This combination produces and extremely well marbled, tender, mild beef from livestock that have only eaten grass their entire lives.  It’s extremely popular and we are really struggling to keep up with demand.  We sell halves, wholes, and individual retail cuts.  Last year we sold out in 3 months.

I have spoken with many folks in the know who say that dry aged beef is not only more palatable but more digestible and beneficial to gut flora.  It would make good sense give that most aged products particularly aged cheeses have been shown to operate in the same way.  I am sure most traditional cultures would have aged meats since refrigeration was not available.

We dry age our beef for 21 days.  Dry aging is a process where you hold either an entire carcass or specific cuts of beef at above freezing temperatures for a given amount of time to let naturally occurring bacteria and enzymes break down and flavor the beef.  Hunters of course do this by hanging carcasses in a root cellar or in a game bag in a cool spot in the woods.  Our USDA butcher does it a large refrigerator at temps between 33-35 degrees.  The butcher told us he doesn’t have another grassfed beef producer who can get near enough fat cover on their beef to make them eligible for aging 21 days,  7-14 days is much more common with small grassfed producers and wet aging is the process used for industrially produced meats.  Last year we were able to even go 28 days dry aged on some stuff.  External fat cover prevents spoilage.  We are able to get this fat cover because of the way we manage our beef herd.

We only harvest our steers in the spring after the peak of the grass season when the animals are between 14-18 months of age.  We raise small framed angus influenced cattle.  We have worked very hard to find top quality genetics that finish on grass from animals that are not like the big giant breeds designed to eat a feedlot diet.  Animals grow their bone structure first, muscle next, and put on fat last.  We time their birth so that they are of the right age to finish (i.e. put fat on) when the grasses are the most abundant and are the most nutritious.  We don’t try to finish animals 10 months of the year on crummy irrigated pasture like many other ranchers do in these parts (here in the west with the high heat and dry summers in our opinion most irrigated pasture does not produce good meat).

I am looking for any studies that might suggest that dry aged beef is more nutritious and/or digestible.  If you know of any studies or think there might be enough interest to explore it further please let me know.

Chris Kerston

Chris Kerston is the farm manager for Chaffin Orchards, a family farm that has been in operation for five generations in California. The farm is Certified Predator Friendly and Certified Animal Welfare Approved. Chaffin sells olives, olive oil, citrus fruits and grassfed meats. Chaffin Orchards is a sponsor of RealFoodMedia.com, the traditional food blogging network where you can follow Hartkeisonline.com and other food bloggers committed to supporting sustainable farms.

To find grassfed meat, see the Hartke is Online.com Resources page.