Air Chilling

[Island Roo]

Not much info about air chilling on this site.

I just finished building my CoolBot cooler and will use it for the meaties this year.
I plan to cool the birds down with ice water during the butchering process then hang them to cool further (and dry) in the cooler. The cooler will be set to 36 degrees - probably.

Has anyone tried this?

I'm not sure how long to air chill. I want to age them for 4 days but I'll probably bag them part way thru to prevent excessive drying.

Also - not sure how to hang them. Maybe use the stainless racks and zip tie the legs under the rack. I don't want to sit them on the racks and get them birds imprinted with the rack pattern.

 

[Parront]

Not much info about air chilling on this site.

I just finished building my CoolBot cooler and will use it for the meaties this year.
I plan to cool the birds down with ice water during the butchering process then hang them to cool further (and dry) in the cooler. The cooler will be set to 36 degrees - probably.

Has anyone tried this?

I'm not sure how long to air chill. I want to age them for 4 days but I'll probably bag them part way thru to prevent excessive drying.

Also - not sure how to hang them. Maybe use the stainless racks and zip tie the legs under the rack. I don't want to sit them on the racks and get them birds imprinted with the rack pattern.

View attachment 1816298

That looks pretty neat. I can tell you why I never air-cooled: I did not have one of those! Limited refrigerator size made me cool them in a cooler on ice until they went into the big chest freezer.

 

[archeryrob]

No I have never air dried chickens. My own personal assumptions would be at least 24 - 48 hours for rigor to be finished. I am not sure aging will help or change them any. Are you planning to hang them for days to see if aging tenderizes them? We might only hang deer for a day. Then its boned into buckets and processed over two days sitting in the fridge. Nothing is frozen within 48 hours.

We did make a cooler like your but didn't buy the cool bot. I made my own with a temp sensor and a freeze sensor to imitate the coolbots actions.

It is an Inkbird ITC-1000 and a JCI freeze sensor.

Its easy to build your own. Ours is for deer hunting in the early season.

 

[Island Roo]

Nice job on the redneck CoolBot !
I find the chickens are better after aging for a few days - 4 seems to be perfect. Mainly to let the rigorous completely finish - the flavour and texture seems to peak there. We raise Mistral Gris (more like a freedom ranger) so its more important to age than Cornish Cross.
Game meat hangs for at least a week usually.

 

[Helloworld]

You can get the same result by putting them in a smaller fridge and turning temp up. We always let our meat sit 3 days in fridge before we freeze.