Game meat ageing.

[Oldbloke]

An interesting article about ageing meat.

https://sportingshooter.com.au/hunting- ... ead%20More

[rossfrb]

My experience with normal farmed beef has been with wet aging in vacuum packs - specifically the Umai brand.
I can confirm that the key benefit of wet ageing in vacuum packs is improvement in tenderness, with maybe a slight intensification in flavour - I emphasize slight.
Some rump steak I aged was so tender I could easily force my finger through an inch and a half thick raw steak.
I have tried with cuts of rump, porterhouse, scotch fillet and picanah.
Be prepared for wastage.
You lose a percentage from moisture loss and then some as trimmings of the dry toughened outer layer that forms during the drying period - also called bark.
As an example a fresh 2kg piece dries down to 1.7kg after a couple of weeks with the final trimmed bits removed I ended up with 1.13KG of steaks.
You can use the bark to make a stock for sauces etc.
A friend even made jerky from it with no ill effects.
Meat tends to "sag" when aging and you can end up with a very thin/flat piece of steak.
My tip is to truss any cuts of meat to keep them as round as possible.

[rossfrb]

To emphasise the sag, these steaks were cut from what started out as a 6.6kg cut of beef rump.
If I had trussed the meat into more of a ball they wouldn't have been so long and thin.
You also have to rotate the meat while in the fridge - so you could stop the worst of the sagging by judiciously rotating say 45 degrees every couple of days.

[bigpete]

Honestly never bothered. Should I bother ? Probably.