- [Katie] Like if you tell somebody to think of a cow
you're gonna think of a Holstein.
It's gonna be the black and white spotted cow.
We specialize in USDA prime dry-aged Holstein beef.
The qualities that a lot of people dislike
about Holstein steers, we're in love with.
I think at any given point we have about 3000 primals
in the building.
What I'm gonna do right now is basically open some
of the New York steaks that we got in last week.
The meat industry is kind of funny.
We're one of the few industries that,
that takes something whole
and break it down.
You know a lot of industries
you're gonna buy different parts and and build something.
We do the opposite.
Wet aging is simply leaving the muscle in the bag
under refrigeration for an extended period of time.
Dry-aging?
All we do is take 'em outta the bag.
All right, and this is my dad
Bryan.
- [Bryan] Hi.
- [Katie] Can I open product?
- [Bryan] Sure.
- [Katie] Dad is really the,
the brains behind the business here.
His dad was a butcher, so that makes me third-generation.
So these are gonna go
into our first aging room and you can see right
off the bat how fresh all of these primals are.
They'll spend the first seven days in this room.
The first seven days is really just to get rid of the purge
just the bulk of the, the water weight.
So now this is the second room that they go into.
This room is really cool.
You really can't get it on a video,
but it smells completely different and that's
because we actually have a different system
controlling the temperature.
Because this room is actually connected
to a computer measuring the dew point
it reacts a lot faster to the moisture in the room.
Then that machine over there
on the ceiling is actually a heater.
And so what it will do is if it recognizes
that the moisture has increased in the room
the heater will kick on
in order to get it to evaporate quicker.
And so when you look
at the temperature readout of this room, it's little waves.
What you can see going
on in here is how much the meat has darkened
as a result of the dry aging process.
We don't need to introduce the mold at the beginning;
it's just in the environment here.
So simply by leaving those primals
in a two and then moving them into this room here
you will get this bacterial growth.
The majority of what we do is going
to restaurants at that 14 day age level.
The bulk of what's in this room will actually go
into the next room to be cut out and sent out this week.
You have two things going on with the aging process.
It's going to be the enhancement
of the flavor and the enhancement of the tenderness.
Our focus is the middle meat
basically the rib and the loin.
So we can go in a bunch
of different directions as we fabricate here.
The Jorge in its essence is simply a full bone rib
cut from the first three or four bones
off of the chuck end of the rib.
What I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna pick
out an export rib to cut the Jorge rib steak from.
One side of the rib,
you have three muscles that comprise the whole part.
You've got the longissimus here,
the spinalis dorsi here
and then there's a little tiny baby complexus in there.
This rib cap spinalis dorsi is probably the most
flavorful cut in the entire animal.
So we're basically just gonna take this
and cut it into Jorges.
So what I'm doing right now is I just want to face the end.
So we're just gonna take off that crust, that mold.
So this is a Jorge rib steak, when it comes to flavor,
this steak is everything you want.
As we move towards the loin,
you can absolutely see some of the characteristics
of the Holstein come through, which primarily
is just gonna be a more elongated, narrow muscle shape.
The other thing that I think is unique
to the Holstein is the marbling pattern.
So marbling is going to be the intramuscular fat.
The marbling on Holstein is really fine and almost diffused.
The whole muscle is completely covered
with these tiny, tiny specks.
And so that's what gives you the tenderness and the flavor.
There's a lot of different beef breeds out there.
The breed that we use,
Holstein, is less known in the meat industry.
It's actually incredibly well known in the dairy industry.
We're using the males, the steers,
but female Holsteins are actually the main source
of dairy products in the United States.
So how I was talking about genetically Angus are
like the winners when it comes to meat production.
The Holstein females absolutely take the cake when it comes
to milk production.
The Holstein females, they need a larger bone
structure to be able to support the weight of the utter.
And, so, where that translates into the males,
into the steers,
is that you actually have more bone than you do meat.
And so that would be a detriment in our world,
in the meat world, we want more muscle less bone.
From where, you know, dad and I are sitting,
that's fine, because if we get this marbling every time, yes
that's what we're looking for.
- [Bryan] So this is the, the short loin.
This is the one that makes up a number of different cuts.
It's got the filet, the New York, could be a boneless
New York could be a bone-in New York, could be a T-bone.
A lot of different variations on this one.
So what we'll do here is we'll go ahead
and cut everything bone in on this piece.
What differentiates a porterhouse is the size of the filet.
So as long as the filet stays thick
we can cut it and, and it's a porterhouse.
The minute that filet becomes too small to cut
it becomes a T-bone.
- [Katie] So you can kind of see the filet muscle right here
like dad was talking about how it tapers.
You really can only cut porterhouse to about there.
So really the best next thing to do is to actually
pull that tail off, lose a little bit
of the vertebrae bone here
and cut it into a bone in New York.
- [Bryan] On this one
the first thing you do is we're
gonna take the porterhouse off.
So that's gonna be it on the porterhouse
and now what's left is the T-bone.
Interestingly enough, the national production
of beef right now is close to 30% is Holstein.
It's not being promoted.
It's this mentality that, well that's dairy industry
and we're beef industry, we're meat industry.
You'll see, I'm telling everybody within five to 10 years
Holstein as a breed will be mentioned
at the same level as Angus as a breed.
- [Katie] Because if you think of the dairy industry
the animals need to keep producing babies
in order to keep producing milk.
And you've got some steers, males, you know
you have no use for them.
The options were either, you know, to cull the animals
at birth, just kill them or to move them into veal programs.
But since the seventies
veal has really decreased in popularity.
And so you did within the last couple decades
see more people trying to figure
out where do we put these male Holsteins?
You know, where do they fit in the big picture?
- [Bryan] I always use this part of the knife.
I hardly ever use this part of the knife.
This is where you really want
to be doing your cutting.
Closer to your hand. More control.
Most butchers, naturally so, working in a retail
or, or store where they're selling to the customer
it doesn't matter the exact weight
because they're gonna sell it by weight.
We're gonna put it on the scale
and that's where they're gonna charge.
With us, either to restaurants or to our online customers.
If we say it's a 12-ounce steak,
we can't sell 'em an 11.4.
As a grocery store could put it up
and say they'll charge the price,
we have to be exact, which means slightly over.
- [Katie] That is what would separate out a good butcher,
is understanding that it's not
the same motion with a knife every single time.
You have got to constantly be thinking.
- [Bryan] So out of that whole piece, we got nine steaks.
Interestingly enough, you could see the amount of waste.
So, we lost a third after the shrink loss.
So, it's expensive to do
- [Katie] This one right here.
This is the absolute pinnacle on flavor
on just everything works like magic in this box.
So we tend to keep the older product in here.
And this is also where things get forgotten about.
- [Bryan] Those are the hundred, No, those are 400s, huh?
- [Katie] These turned one year old in March.
These are kind of nutty.
This is almost a good visual
of why aging too far is not a good idea.
That is really, really cool to see how it's gotten so dry
that the natural seams between the muscles are
actually pulling apart as it shrinks down.
And that's bad.
You don't want that because that opening there
allows the mold to walk into the product.
That piece is, that basically is, is no good at this point.
It's gone too far.
It's a complete loss.
I, it's almost just like a science experiment.
- [Bryan] Do you wanna split one
and see what's inside while we're here?
- [Katie] We could.
Are you guys game?
I was just saying 50% of the weight in just moisture loss.
Oh my god.
- [Bryan] You can see how dark from that.
- [Katie] Dude! That's, that's for Sola at this point.
- [Bryan] Not as bad as I thought.
- [Katie] It's not as bad as I thought it would be.
Honestly. We're legitimately at like 16 months.
- [Bryan] That is interesting.
That is.
- [Katie] I thought it was gonna
be hard all the way through.
- [Bryan] Yeah. Yeah.
- [Katie] Oh, and it's gorgeous too.
Go figure.
- [Bryan] Yeah, it's a beautiful piece.
Look at the marbling.
- [Katie] That's crazy.
- [Bryan] Yeah, the only thing I think is
gonna be salvageable at this
is the, the absolute heart, the core.
That's like the center of the ribeye.
- [Katie] So I mean if we're comparing the size
this cored out muscle right here, was that.
So I mean you can see how much we lost.
Oh no, it's really good.
- [Bryan] Kyle, you want some funk?
- [Katie] That on a cracker with some cheese? Yeah.
- [Bryan] You need a lot of wine.
- [Katie] I started with dad kind
of full time when I was 19 and now I'm 33.
I definitely know where I get my stubborn streak from,
but at the end of the day we have the same goal.
We both love what we're doing.
We both love working with each other.
- [Bryan] Katie was away at school.
She decided that she wanted to take a year off
and she came home.
We had just about, I guess six months launched the website
and it dawned on me, I said,
"here's a business, here's the website.
It's doing business.
Do something with it."
In six months, she tripled it.
And so she was able to decide how to price something,
what to put on sale, what to do.
If it worked it was her, you know, complimented it.
It didn't and it was her mistake
and it, it was a world
of an education for her and she just, you know, ran with it.
Well, she runs it now.
She, you know, honestly, I'm, I'm more of an advisor.
She understands the, the things that I don't like
the Instagram and the, and the Facebook
and like who are those people and what do they want?
She gets it.
- [Katie] I think the actual fabrication
of dry-aged meat
it's got a completely different tactile feel to it.
It's got a different aroma.
I love it.
I think you can get a lot of fulfillment out of it.
Basically ready to get packed.
Once things move into this room,
it's packaging and then out the door.
All right, so now we're gonna pack
up these portion cut New Yorks.
So they basically come out this side.
Each steak is individually Cryo-vaced
and it's got a really nice tight seal on it.
So when the restaurant customer gets it
they'll be able to hold onto the steak in their walk-in
for about a week or so before they have to use it.
What's basically going on with this guy is
it's just like a hot water bath.
So you have a much tighter seal when you dip tank.
So these are our 16-ounce, 14-day dry-aged New Yorks.
We work with a distributor chef's warehouse.
So right now we've got Los Angeles,
Las Vegas, and San Francisco
'Cause really what we do, it's, it's a specialty item.
You know, we're never going to be like the sole supplier
for a restaurant when it comes to beef.
We're, you know, one or two spots on the menu.
That's it.
And I like that.
And it lets us, you know
completely geek out on what we have.
- [Colton Hays] Oh, we have a 45-day dry-aged ribeye
from Flannery Beef here.
Oh, we're just gonna cut some ribeyes off this.
It'll probably be a 20 ounce ribeye.
You can see the marbling amazing, right?
I think the Holstein has better,
better fat content, better marbling, flavor is nicer
and the dry-age really lends well to that.
Epic's been using, working with Flannery for the 10 years,
about 10 years and it's been a good relationship.
So yeah, we're gonna lay these guys out.
- [Katie] My goal isn't to like
make the sale no matter what.
Like I wanna make sure that you're happy with our product.
And so I'm gonna be super upfront
with exactly what it is and what we do here.
- [Colton Hays] So we'll let these guys rest in here
for about six, eight minutes.
Brought 'em up to about 128 degrees.
A nice coming up on mid rare, you know
I think this is what it's all about
for a chef is just using the best
so we can get and really highlight it.
- [Katie] Dad is a little bit more
of an optimist that Holstein will be accepted as, you know
a high quality breed.
The big movers in the game are always gonna, you know
kind of push it aside.
But that's okay as long as there's enough for us.
I like being a niche.
I do because we're not, you know
stretching ourselves too thin.
We know what we like and we're just obsessing over that
and making sure that it's always the best that it can be.
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