Long ago. and B. I don't have the test equipment I did then. I guess what I'm saying is don't be afraid to get too technical with me in your answers. What I wouldn't give for a helium leak detector right now...
After a few years of research, I finally decided to purchase a freeze dryer. It was one of the best purchases I have ever made. The only regret I have is that I didn’t buy one sooner.
Racquel Ruetz Albert was quick to respond to my inquiry about the delivery of our harvest right freeze dryer.
When isolated, the pump seems to behave well. Short of putting a meter on the pump, my impression is that it is operating properly. I'm considering investing in a good meter to verify that it is reaching a good ultimate vacuum.
The pros and cons are easy to understand. In fact, there really is only one pro and it’s a huge one. Those who are willing to spend the time and money to freeze dry their own food should do so as long as they’re going to be committed.
How does freeze drying work? To put it simply, it freezes the food then goes through a sublimation process where it dries the food.
Door seal appears good against the plexiglass side, even stripe of contact, nice and wide. Inside gasket groove has been checked for debris and cracks. Looks OK, but the design seems odd to me!
After buying our freeze dryer I was naturally curious as to how it "knew" when harvest right Ontario something was done, since batch times varied so much depending on what was being processed. Watching the cycle times didn't seem to tell me anything at first -- especially without a thermometer to tell me what was happening inside -- until I finally caught on that applying heat to the frozen food affected the vacuum, which provided the measure of how dry the food had become.
We sold a grainmill also, hyped by a friend who had several. Used it some also. Nothing happened and other things incl food was donated or tossed. Now retired, who has time or money to throw away again? not me.
We have two freezers in the garage as well. All of these machines generate heat and humidity. Our FDer front regularly sweats up an storm and water drips off the door and from around the entire chamber perimeter down the front of the unit. It got so bad that I taped a plastic shield above the display to route the water around it. You can see the water on the door and on the stainless steel front past the Know More 4 screws on the unit.
Remove all ice every oito hours of drying time. It is amazing how much faster the drying time drops doing this. A side benefit is water vapor does not contaminate the oil as fast. I've gotten up to 20 cycle per oil change by carefully monitoring the oil and water.
Granted, most of that time is the freeze dryer doing all the work, but the process is not without effort. Once the food is ready it must be put into appropriate containers with oxygen absorbers and sealed properly so they can last.
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Unfortunately, freeze-dried food can often be very expensive. We’ve seen this first hand as the only company that sells both frozen beef boxes to store in the freezer for up to a year as well as freeze-dried beef cubes to store in the closet for over a decade.