Reading "A5"

Graders from the Japan Meat Grading Association assess carcasses at processing plants under the association's carcass trading standard. [Handbook 2021]

• Yield grade: A, B or C, best first. [Handbook 2021]
• Quality grade: 5 down to 1. Each of four items is scored separately: marbling, meat colour and brightness, firmness and texture, and fat colour and quality. The carcass gets the lowest of the four. [Handbook 2021]
• Marbling is scored with a BMS number. The 1988 revision replaced the older grades (ordinary to special selection) with A–C and 1–5, and introduced the BMS number. [Enoki 2008]

On those terms, the handbook calls A5 the top grade and C1 the lowest. [Handbook 2021]

The A in A5 is about yield, meaning a high share of usable meat. It describes the carcass, not how the meat eats. Kobe, for example, accepts yield grade B. [Handbook 2021]

The colour checks partly reflect appearance. A meat inspector told Schatzker that white fat is preferred because it looks better against red meat, not because it tastes better. [Schatzker]

Taste is personal. Schatzker writes that most of the Japanese beef lovers he talked to preferred A3, and only two said they liked A5. That is one traveller's conversations, not a survey. [Schatzker]

Use matters too. Yamamoto notes that dry-agers tend to choose Japanese Black around A4, and that the traditional Japanese hanging method usually uses top-grade Japanese Black. [Yamamoto 2017]

A grade on a menu answers two questions, yield and quality. It does not tell you the breed, the brand, the age of the animal or how the meat was aged. For those, look for the brand name and ask the restaurant.

Portions can be small. Schatzker describes A5 at a Tokyo yakiniku restaurant cut to about 3 mm thick and the size of a business card, grilled at the table. He adds that in Japan rich fat is an occasional treat. He doubted any Japanese person would eat A3–A5 beef twice in one day, as he had. [Schatzker]