Should I have a steak at 28 days or let it ride to 45?

Both

lop one off now

not much at 28days, but will orovide a comparison

and for the luvva jeezus, dont trim the thing

RRP said:

No offense, but anything less than 35 days is not worth the bother 

Amen brother. I'm forced to concur. 

If this is your firt time, i would still recommend sampling before 45 days and then again at 45

Aged beef wasn't trimmed. But thise new to it get skeeved out, and tend to lop off all the rind because it is brown and hard and doesn't look like it would be appetizing

when this craze started to take on momentum about ten years ago, there was one flawed method on about.com using sjowing a process. It used towels, for one thing. 

The shops who sold aged beef were all at 28 days, max. None of them trimmed

Julia Child's butcher would scrape off the mold (of any) and loose tags or but. But that's it. 

28 days was good, and cooked better, than dresh steaks, but I honestly didn't notice a difference 

There was one shop near me and fishless that sold the beef at 45 days though. I was buying a lot of it, and it was getting spendy. I talked to the dude behind the counter, researched a little industry history, and started aging it myself. There was nothing on the net with any good info except the write ups we were all doing on the old forum. 

I never found any butcher then or previous who would trim. But that butcher (now since closed at the location near me) asked once "you want it trimmed?"  I asked "since when"

He said "honestly, we sell tons of it, but it's to the yuppie wives. And they ask me to trim it because it looks gross"

This is all over the web now too. Pics of dudes aging at home and then trimming.

i'm a big boy and understand people like stuff the way they do. 

I just propose that they ought to try it the way it was done first, and see the difference

there's a point when mommy stops cutting the crust off bread for us and we finally realize the crust can be the best part of the bread. Or that wine doesn't need to be cold. Or cheese is better when it's moldy (if that's the intent).  Same for this stuff

if you trim it all away, you lose the most condensed beefy part. You get 'aged' beef all across the steak. It all ages. But it doesn't all dry. Part of what we are after is the condense beefiness 

the surface softens and fries, there is no water (or not very much) in the fat. And that crust is hard won. The meat can be tougher in the rind, sure. But the flavor is the real goal

no worries if you try it and decide later to trim heavily in subsequent attempts. I just don't understand why the trend is near universal to rim. As though there is no virtue at all to the exterior. The exterior was always the intent. Or most of it. 

If a person doean't like it drier wet aging will give you the same aging without weight loss (water). Tenderness and aged flavor will be the result but just no condensed beef flavor. 

Absolutely concur with 45 day.  Darby's suggestion to sample 28 to compare is logical unless you just want to believe us all...  Good luck brother!