Freeze Drying Another Batch of Fresh Peaches - Batch 640
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- Опубліковано 14 жов 2024
- Freeze drying a fifth batch of peaches this year, batch 640. More peaches sliced using a Spam slicer. This batch starts on August 30th with peaches from mid/late August.
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Before buying a freeze dryer, perhaps research to find out more about the downside of the machine; some people have problems with their machine and it's big and heavy and hard to return!
When trying to decide what to freeze dry you can start by asking why.
Start by asking yourself this question. Why are you freeze drying food? Knowing this should help you decide what you should freeze dry first.
I'm freeze drying because:
Just to freeze dry leftovers?
You want to make your own food for camping/backpacking?
For if/when the SHTF?
For a short term emergency?
You have your own garden and want to freeze dry the food?
You love Costco but don't have a family of 6?
You are good at finding the food sales but only have 1 freezer?
When you cook homemade chili just for yourself you make 10 gallons? Because you have 3 full freezers and are worried about power outages?
If I knew then what I know now, I would have freeze dried things in a different order. Or maybe not, because I started freeze drying because we had 3 full freezers, I was thinking of getting another one, and I decided I should buy a walk-in freezer instead. I started looking into walk-ins and realized they were expensive to buy (even used ones) AND expensive to own and operate. Then I found out Harvest Right was making home sized freeze dryers. One of my first thoughts was "I like Mountain House!" I have used their food for backpacking almost 45 years and we even kept some in our travel trailer, for just in case.
Freeze dried food will stay fresh for many years and be ready and waiting when you need it.
We do videos showing how we are using our Harvest Right Freeze Dryer to freeze dry food for long term storage. (We have the medium size machine that we got in August of 2017) We talk about how to load and unload the freeze dryer, how to know if the food is dry, is it better to freeze dry raw food or cooked food, and do a few taste tests. Freeze dried food is also great for prepping or just for camping and snacking!
Want to support the channel? Buy me a coffee :-) www.buymeacoffee.com/DanZm
If you are thinking of buying a freeze dryer, please consider supporting us by purchasing through our affiliate link. It helps us and costs you nothing! affiliates.harvestright.com/995.html
Before buying a freeze dryer perhaps research to find out more about the downside of the machine; like with any big machine, some people say they have had problems with their machine and it's big and heavy and hard to return!
Here is the list of Freeze dryers I've heard of: (If anyone knows of any others, please add to the list) (as of July 23rd 2023)
harvestright.com/ (only one I've used) All the others might be great, I've just never tried them.
p4lfood.com/ "The Cube" Same machine as the 4Patriots one? (Facebook page only a few months old?)
4patriots.com/products/4patriots-home-freeze-drying-system - Maybe built by Prep4 Life?
stayfreshfreezedry.com/ - One person start-up import business? (Judging by the corporation papers listing a home as the Registered Address)
www.cuddonfreezedry.com/products/ - Big - Probably not really a home unit. At least 20 times bigger than medium HR
wmmachinery.com/products/freeze-dryer-for-home-use - Lower priced. Shipped direct from China?
www.labrotovap.com/portfolio-item/large-home-freeze-dryer-lyophilizer-for-sale/ - Knockoff? Even used some of Harvest Right web page photos.
www.usalab.com/freeze-dryers/ - Two models? Do they make or rebrand.
freezedryco.com/equipment/food-cannabis/ Freeze Dry Company - more commercial
www.hudsonvalleylyomac.com/stratus-mp3-series-floor-model.html Hudson Valley Lyomac - not really home size units
d-freeze.com/ D-Freeze - Not out yet, being built in Canada
www.freezedryfood.de/en/ FreezeDry® German
bluealpinefreezedryers.com/ Blue Alpine Freeze Dryers - Idaho - Very new/Start-up - Looks very promising! (If I were buying one today, I'd look into this one)
You are absolutely right about the gloves. This food is for you and your family not for sale to the public. Your kitchen is yours!
🤣 Glove comment people crack me up! I wear gloves all the time they are _needed,_ as determined by me at that time.
I like to tell them that they don't have to worry, I'm not going to share with them!
I'll bet if they were _really_ hungry they wouldn't ask if I wore gloves when I processed it! 😇
Just came across your channel for the first time and can't get my head around why this channel isn't 500x more popular. Your exact standards are an excellent example and you don't make things complicated for people to understand. Thanks for making these videos
Thanks so much for watching and commenting! And thanks for the kind words.
(I hope you meant _isn't_ instead of _is_ :)
@@SchoolReports I did! sorry about that 😜 butter fingers
@@Goldbacker00 🤣 Well, you never know. We've probably all seem Amazon ratings saying some product is the worst thing ever - 5 Stars!
@@SchoolReports The internet is truly it's own collection of craziness 🤣 Are you into prepping at all? Is that your motivation?
@@Goldbacker00 When we started looking at freeze dryers I wasn't thinking about prepping or anything like that. (Not even, I'm ashamed to say, the potential of emergencies) We did consider being able to make our own freeze dried food for camping, because I've used (and loved) Mountain House freeze dried food for almost 50 years.
Our freeze dried stock is used as our pantry. (But we've always kept necessary supplies well stocked - I hate running out of things) For us, the big reason we (Okay, I) wanted a freeze dryer was because we had 3 large freezes full of meals and ingredients and lived in some fear of a power outage or mechanical failure. I started looking for a walk-in freezer, then realized that that wouldn't be an improvement, it would just be more costly to operate and maintain with the same problems. (And completely nuts because even used ones are not cheap) That's when we came upon Harvest Right. Now it's been over 6 years and we still have 3 freezers a little less full and 50+ bins of freeze dried food, even though we've been eating (and sharing) our own freeze dried food for 6 years.
I just took the last of mine out of the freeze dryer! Holy heck - 2 bushel finally complete!
I love your shirt! 😂
I think maybe you did more peaches than we did. (I'm ashamed to say I don't know how many peaches are in a bushel, and I used to be in charge of the closing area of fruit packing plant - and we did peaches! - and other fruit) 🤣 I do remember that the peaches were packed in 2/5 bushel boxes and pears and apples were packed in 2/5 and 4/5 bushel boxes.
We did 7 freeze dryer loads, plus two pies worth, some still in the freezer for peach cobbler, and a bunch of frozen slices sent home with my sister-in-law. (editing the final, two batch video now) The peaches were so good this year!
The "squirrels who couldn't make decision" cracked me up 😂😂😂
Always love seeing your shirts. I totally agree with that one, LOL.
Thanks. The "Flat Squirrels" or the "Defund?" They are both such important issues! 🤣
I have been binge watching you once I found you. I am now worried about my sealing of the bags. I use 7 mil mylar. Your seal is so flat, mine tends to have bubbles inbetween the two seal edges. Today I will test different settings on the harvesr right sealer. It my just need a differen seal time.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
The top edge that we seal should look similar to the other 3 sides. If not, there could be an issue.
Maybe these will be useful: (Forgive me if you've already seen them)
New Sealer vs Old Sealer (or Sealer Failure to Function) ua-cam.com/video/oDnaGpdMZuw/v-deo.htmlsi=QPhu-xMfY6l-YtuZ&t=1852
Quick Test for Mylar Bag Heat Sealer ua-cam.com/video/DUEFOHBuILI/v-deo.htmlsi=cHxCzeVZ7YgL3Z-C
Do you have a video that explains your system of how you have your food organized? Such as all veggies bins 1-5, all fruits in 6-10… idk. I’m trying to figure out how to organize it and I’m not coming up with anything. But I’m behind in this game, my FD is coming Wednesday! I do have food that I’ve purchased though. Thanks
😀Two words: Barcode Scanner. And maybe a little RC forklift.
My first thought when I decided to track our inventory was to use a warehouse inventory management system. (WMS) And, of course, barcode every bag (or RFID tags) with a unique code, have scanners at the prep area, bagging area, and at the racks. I could track all movement! I could track the WIP and the BOMs for each batch. . . . 🤣 The response I got? Let me ask you this - Is it possible for someone to damage their Eye-rolling muscles? My wife though we try a simple database first, since we don't have 1000's of SKU's or a large warehouse.
But, seriously. . .
We keep it _super_ simple by *_not_* "organizing" it! 😁
I really don't have a single video that shows, in any detail, all the storage and tracking of the bags of food.
Until I started making the "First 50 Batch" series I really hadn't given much thought to having a plan or goal for our freeze drying. That was a big reason I started making the series; to tell other people to start with a plan or goal! The bins from those batches would be great for grab-and-go bins because they each have a good mix of foods.
There is no organization of our inventory on our racks of freeze dried food. 😁We just put the bags into bins and track the locations in a data base. It's like a small, super simple, warehouse management system. (We both spent a lot of years in food related manufacturing) We do print an updated hard copy every month or two and use it for the day to day movements of bags in and out.
We are using OpenOffice database to track our bags of food, and of course, we can sort by food, date, or location. I don't know what you've already seen, but if these aren't enough to help, let me know and I'll see if I can show it in more detail. These two videos show a bit of it: (there are more bits in other videos, I just don't know where because I didn't do a good job of labeling/tracking videos) 😅
Recapping the First 50 Batches ua-cam.com/video/IRkac5wrCzI/v-deo.html
This spot in this video show a bit more of the rack storage. ua-cam.com/video/1FNCelTsgrg/v-deo.htmlsi=CB_k2C1HhohoxlTY&t=124
The system of organizing you described (veggies bins 1-5, all fruits in 6-10. etc) is more or less how we started. We had a tag on each bin listing what was in that bin. By the time we had 20 or 30 bins full _and_ had used some of it, moving things in and out, things started to get messy. That's why/when we switched to tracking using a database and just put the bags wherever there was space. We found, for us, it was easier to find anything.
Sure I watch your videos for freeze-drying knowledge, but when I'm hitting that "play" button, I'm thinking ... "can't wait to see what pithy t-shirt he''s got on today."
Come for the freeze drying, stay for the shirts! 🤣
at what point in the process should the temp start warming up? is it during the drying? My drying cycle stays around 8-10 degrees - i have not gotten to the very end of drying yet.
The temperature shown on the display or the actual temperature of the food?
You should start seeing the display temperature rise very soon after the "Drying" cycle starts. It takes much longer to see a rise of the temperature in the center of the food. The tray temperature will show 100+ºf for hours before the food is finished drying, but the food itself will only make it to the final tray temperature at the end of the process.
On my sister's 2022 machine, the location of the thermistor is here - ua-cam.com/video/91gEssGQsYw/v-deo.htmlsi=qBzQzaSKS1iMOAhu&t=1517 It touches/is part of the heater pad and therefore show a (relatively) high temperature early in the process.
I haven't heard from anyone telling me that the thermistor location has been moved. (Maybe you could check on yours and let me know:)