How much beef will wind up in my freezer when I purchase a quarter?

The simple answer is about 85 lbs of packaged beef. The real answer is it depends on the starting and hanging weight, plus the weight loss that occurs in dry aging and processing to turn the quarter into the ideal individual cuts. A restaurant purchasing a whole beef for hamburger would have a much higher ratio of hanging weight to packaged weight than the typical consumer wanting the ideal cuts. We estimate a 35% variance from hanging weight to packaged weight as an estimate using optimal standard cuts.