UMAi Dry Aging Bags vs Traditional Meat Aging

Is the UMAi dry aging bag a fad or does it really work?

We’ve recently seen a video that compares the UMAi dry aging bag against Crazy Dave’s traditional dry aging. For those who don’t know, Crazy Dave is one of the more popular Youtube experts on Dry Aging so this is a good comparison. He did comparison 2 videos with slightly different procedures which we’ll get into.

In Crazy Dave’s comparison test, he took similar subprimal prime ribs and used the bags on one following UMAi’s instruction on bagging. This was his first time and thought his first attempt at bagging was a fail but he missed the part that the UMAi dry bags are not vacuum bags and not to expect a tight vacuum seal. He did get a good seal on his unneeded second attempt. The Crazy Dave dry age beef went directly into his dry aging refrigerator along side the bagged meat. Crazy Dave has invested thousands on his dry again refrigerator and the gadgets he uses which is impressive. But one of the big selling points is that the UMAi bags can go directly in your everyday refrigerator.

75 days later, Crazy Dave pulled out his meats for a smell and visual test. Both were very similar except that the UMAi bag had a shine on the surface which can be seen on other videos. I’m still not sure where that comes from and I’m searching for an explanation for it. Off to the taste test. Crazy Dave relied on Youtube BBQ Master, Dyno Dan, to do the cooking and invited all his BBQ buddies over for the taste test. The taste test was a blind test in that no one knew which meat was Crazy Daves and which one was UMAi.

They all filled out a form to score the meats (A vs B) and the UMAi bags blew out Crazy Daves traditional aging. Hands down. Comments included everything from OMAi being more tender and flavorable to UMAi having a better smell.

Here’s the video, which is pretty long – almost an hour.

I don’t think Crazy Dave was too crazy about his traditional aging losing to this new fangled easy and cheaper method of aging so he decided to do a second comparison test. This time Crazy Dave aged the UMAi meat in his normal refrigerator while he placed his meat in the traditional ager refrigerator. I feel this is a better test since this is exactly what the UMAi bags were designed for; regular people aging meats without paying for all the equipment needed for traditional aging. Crazy Dave also reduced the aging time from 75 days to 50 days. This time the results were more for Crazy Dave’s prime rib, but only slightly and not as overwhelmingly as with the first challenge where UMAi won. Thank goodness this part II is only about 30 minutes.