Meat Cooler

In addition to our General Construction Guide and A/C Selection Guide, here are a few tips for how to best use a CoolBot for your walk-in meat cooler:

Concrete Floor: For our customers who only use their coolers a few weeks out of the year, you can generally use a concrete floor without additional insulation. However, you should still use rigid foam insulation on the walls to reach an R value of at least 25.

Drain: Many of our hunting and meat customers need drainage for blood and spray washing the cooler. While drains are great for capturing liquid, they also can easily pull out the cold air from your cooler. Be sure to use an air tight seal with a cover for any drain, and keep it as small as possible. Keep the drain sealed and covered when not in active use.

Organization: We recommend installing a combination of a gambrel system and butcher’s hooks for a neat hanging setup. And for processed meat, stacking it on some inexpensive wire shelving.

Now that you’ve got your CoolBot walk-in cooler set up to keep your meat chilled and fresh, you’ll probably want to process it. There are many different tools of the trade, but most meat processors work with at least a few basics: a grinder, a slicer, and a vacuum sealer are a good combo to start with.

The STX INTERNATIONAL STX-3000-MF is a great meat grinder to start your processing operation with. It operates with 3 speeds, 3 different blades and plates, and comes with a variety of accessories including sausage stuffing tubes. The Weston No. 8 Commercial Meat Grinder is a higher-end commercial option as well.

For a meat slicer, the Chef’s Choice 615 Premium Electric Food Slicer is one of the most popular on the market.

We like the FoodSaver GameSaver Big Game Vacuum Sealing System for vacuum sealing – it’s large enough for big game and has the capacity to do up to 80 consecutive seals.

Oh, and of course a dehydrator for jerky. We’ve used the Nesco FD-75A Snackmaster Pro Food Dehydrator for multiple types of jerky and for dried fruit too and love it.

The ideal temperatures for curing meats tend to run on the higher end of the CoolBot’s temperature settings (around 55F), so a smaller A/C can often be used. A CoolBot-driven system generally runs at 70% – 90% humidity, right in the target range for most of our meat curing customers. For customers who desire a different humidity level, we suggest using calcium chloride, additional fans, or a mechanical dehumidifier as needed. Please note that if you use a mechanical dehumidifier, you will need to upsize your A/C from our normal sizing recommendation to account for the additional heat being generated by the dehumidifier.