Sydney company Stanley St Meat Markets are bringing a touch of South Africa to Australians. For centuries sun-drying meat was the primary means of preserving food. Biltong can now be enjoyed as a premium quality snack, reflecting today's demand for natural, wholesome convenience foods. Stanley St Meat Markets have taken traditional African recipes and cure their Biltong in purpose-built drying rooms in the Sydney village of St Ives.
Part of the process is to cure the beef after it has been marinated in various spices. The beef is placed on racks in a special chamber and then cured over a number of hours. One of the problems with this process is that there is moisture in the beef which is prolonging the curing process and not drying it out sufficiently.
Stanley St Meat Markets contacted Munters, the humidity experts, to rectify this problem. The answer was to install a Munters desiccant dehumidifier to maintain the relative humidity (RH) of the drying chamber at 40%RH or lower. This has resulted in a consistent RH being maintained in the chamber and therefore producing a consistently high quality product.
The Munters process – how it works
The principle of Munters desiccant dehumidifiers is very simple. Moisture is absorbed onto a slowly-revolving desiccant wheel as the air passes through. A small heater reactivates the wheel in another air-stream and drives off the moisture which has collected on the drying side of the dehumidifier. This is either vented outside the building or collected as condensation and discharged. As all the moisture is removed as water vapour by the desiccant wheel, the dehumidifier can operate effectively even at very low temperatures and still maintain the desired humidity conditions.
