About Bray Cured Charcuterie
Bray Cured is a British charcuterie manufacturer supplying their products to local restaurants in Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, as well as selling online through their e-commerce website braycured.com.
Alex Mugan, Bray’s founder, insists that their raw product is sourced from local farmers who use the highest welfare standards to produce hogget and breeding sows, which would otherwise have limited use but when used for Charcuterie has increased flavour due to the maturity of the meat.
Established in 2021 at a site in Bray, a purpose-built facility was created to produce their charcuterie to the highest standard. To achieve the consistency required and to ensure the best flavours it was vital that Alex had full control of the environmental conditions in which the product is to be cured and dried.
At this point Humidity Solutions was contacted to add their humidity control expertise to the project to create the required controlled environment.
Design Conditions
Humidity Solutions’ first job is to understand what is required by the customer and what loads – both temperature and humidity are going to be put on the system. Once this has been done we can create a specification specific to Bray Cured’s required conditions.
This particular specification was built around a curing room of 70m3 with a requirement for a temperature of 12⁰C, relative humidity of 65-75%rh and minimal air changes once the door is closed and in this instance, an airlock was not available.
With no windows and the door being a refrigeration well-sealed door, and the room constructed from highly efficient insulation panels, all meant that the product load to be considered was under 2kw of heat gains from the new product.
The product load is created from nine trolleys of product in the store at one time but only one trolley is added during a week. Each trolley equates to 200kg of product and remains in the drying room for 8-12 weeks.
From the specification calculations and hence an equipment selection can be made. Because both temperature and humidity needed to be controlled, a HiDew CCA Unit was the ideal solution. The CCA unit features a steam humidifier, refrigerant dehumidifier, heating, cooling, air movement, filtration and control all in one system which is a better solution than using different equipment for each element and trying to tie together the controls to provide the performance expected.
A sensor reads the ambient humidity and temperature and then activates heating, cooling, dehumidification, and humidification when necessary with the appropriate and adjustable dead bands in the control loops. This makes it very easy to use and ensures that the area is always at optimum condition which can also be varied to the particular manufacturing process taking place.
The Conclusion:
The installed CCA Unit has resulted in a controlled environment in their curing room. The charcuterie is prepared by the in-house butcher, held at 12°C and 75% relative humidity to slowly dry and cure the product whilst also developing the right sort of mould to enhance flavour.
The product is then stored in the curing room for approximately 6 weeks, before being sliced, packed and delivered to the customer base via the online shop. The launch of their products has been a success, winning 8 awards at the 2023 Great Taste Awards.
The owner of Bray Cured said “The HiDew CCA Unit has created the ideal environment for us to produce award-winning charcuterie for our customers. The level of service we received from Humidity Solutions throughout the process was excellent, making it easy to understand as someone who is not an expert in humidity control.”
As an additional accolade, Alex appeared on James Martin’s Saturday Kitchen where the product was lauded as being wonderful by some of England’s top chefs.
If you would like to find out more about Bray Cured’s award-winning product, click the link here: https://braycured.com/collections/shop
Humidity Solutions has extensive experience in producing perfect environmental conditions for the production of award-winning charcuterie. Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help within this industry by calling 01372571200 or email info@humiditysolutions.co.uk.
