Harvest Right Freeze Dryer - my results

FrugalFannie

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So finally got the Harvest Right freeze dryer and ready to start the first batch. DH set it up the other day and last night looking over the directions and checking to see what all was done, I noticed the il level on the pump was a little low. He topped it off and I said "don't fill it up too much." Not that I knew anything. So today I was doing the prechecks and one of the things you do is make sure your pump is working right and SPLOOSH! Oil all over the place. So now I'm kind of freaked out. I'm looking through the booklet to see what could have possibly gone wrong. And yep, too much oil in the pump and it will end up getting vented out the "exhaust." So I cleaned that all up and went through the checks again (after trying but failing to find some way to take out the excess oil - didn't want to use the drain). But this time I was ready! I had my hand on the button in case it happened again, the area draped off to keep the carpet clean, and paper towels in hand. This time, good to go!

So I started the freeze cycle on the machine to get it cold - required for frozen foods - as I was going to be putting homemade ice cream (no sugar, we use monk fruit to sweeten it) in. 2 trays of ice cream, 1 tray of sweet potatoes, and 1 tray of cooked scrambled eggs (15 large eggs). After putting the trays in I restarted the cycle and it's nearly done with the 9 hours of freeze time. After this it will draw a vacuum on the machine and start the drying cycle (a process where it slightly warms the food so the moisture can sublimate out and then refreezes it).

The food should be ready to come out sometime tomorrow morning.


PS. before I posted this it was time for the freeze cycle to end. Thankfully I grabbed some paper towels "just in case" because the oil did come out of the exhaust again. Not as bad as before but I'm glad I was there. So now it's started it's drying cycle and the pressure is dropping? very well. At 5 minutes in it was already at 335 mTorr, so vacuum achieved!

I will keep y'all updated!
 
SO the first batch is out. After about 26 hours the sweet potatoes and scrambled eggs were done. We put the ice cream back in for a couple more hours. That basically turned to dust when we scooped it off the trays. But very tasty dust! DH tried the sweet potatoes and liked them (without rehydrating). I think I will try the eggs for breakfast tomorrow. This machine is fantastic!

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It's a lyophilizer? I should just use the one at work.. Save for the fact it has blood samples in it most of the time.. Edit.. I think the enterprising minds here at NES could make a slightly larger, more efficient one.

You need a freezer that is air tight, cold trap, and a vacuum pump. You're limited on lyophilizers by the size of the cold trap.
 
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So this morning I measured out my eggs, put them in a bag similar to what we will be using when we hike and added boiling water. While I should have let them rehydrate a little longer (patience may not be my strongest suit) they actually came out very good. I dumped off the extra water, added some salt and pepper and ate up. They had great "form" and good texture, which I believe would have improved if I had used a little more patience in the rehydrating phase. I was using too wide a bag at 11" wide as that's what I had on hand. a 6" or 8" wide bag would have been much better I think for the purposes of rehydrating. Or if eating these where I had dishes I probably would have rehydrated them in a sandwich sized tupperware container with a cover and tossed them about after a few minutes to get them well hydrated.
 
Very cool. I have been eyeballing that machine for a while now, just haven't pulled the trigger yet.
 
Very cool. I have been eyeballing that machine for a while now, just haven't pulled the trigger yet.

while it's not much of a test yet I will be rehydrating sweet potatoes tonight. I am sure these will be great but will let you know. We need to get some more food ready to fill the machine, some different things to try. Maybe some baked (since we can't use a grill here) chicken and maybe boneless pork chops, maybe even some steak and then some "MRE" type foods (stews/chili/etc).
 
It seems like Harvest Right makes a few machines. What model did you get and where did you get it from?

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk
 
I'd be interested, if I can get a couple bottles of oil. [smile]
Talk about sucking a golf ball through a garden hose. These things will pull the golf course through it as well.

Also.. I have some edwards vacuum pumps here at work that are free for the taking.. They need a refurb(they leak oil).
 
while it's not much of a test yet I will be rehydrating sweet potatoes tonight. I am sure these will be great but will let you know. We need to get some more food ready to fill the machine, some different things to try. Maybe some baked (since we can't use a grill here) chicken and maybe boneless pork chops, maybe even some steak and then some "MRE" type foods (stews/chili/etc).

Knock out some good healthy recipes and start vacuum sealing it while stockpiling and you've got yourself a new revenue stream, long distance hikers will beat a path to your door to get away from the high sodium stuff sold in stores(especially if you go the vegetarian/vegan/gluten free route). There are a few small cottage industry types out there currently charging as much as $19 for a 4.5oz. bag.
 
very cool. just looked up the machine. even the smallest is 2' x 1.5' x 1.5' and costs 2500.

Wonder if there is a used market for these, would like to try this, or someone who would lease it out. Maybe a new business?

Not sure what the payback on this is, how much you have to dry out to make this worthwhile. Figuring if you freeze dry food over 5 years maybe it pays itself? I am sure the quality beats MREs big time!
 
It seems like Harvest Right makes a few machines. What model did you get and where did you get it from?

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

Right now they really only sell this one for home use https://harvestright.com/#

They have started producing a larger machine but they pre-sold those (I think 100 of them in all) and they will be rolling out in the next couple months. I opted not to go with it so that I don't have to get crazy with the amount of foods I prep for FDing and they have opted to keep the same pump for the larger unit and I didn't think that was very wise.

They do have one that's for scientific use.


And I ordered direct from the manufacturer. I want to be able to deal direct with them if I have any issues. It's not like I can call the local repair guy to fix it if I have a problem.

ETA: just saw the "small" never saw that before. I went with the "standard" size of 4 shelves.
 
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Just a note. The vacuum pump size is irrelevant. The cold trap surface area and temperature is. Once you pull vacuum. If the system is sealed. It should maintain vacuum.
edit also. Thank you for this thread. I have mad food allergies. I have serious interest in food prep.
 
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You dont want to get into rebuilding these pumps. Everything you own will be covered in some of the worst low viscosity oil. The pumps arent necessarily plug and play, they require attendance at times and break down frequently if you dont have a vapor trap in place and ballast them. I've seen the aftermath three times of them catching on fire because of stupid button pushing analysts.

very cool. just looked up the machine. even the smallest is 2' x 1.5' x 1.5' and costs 2500.

Wonder if there is a used market for these, would like to try this, or someone who would lease it out. Maybe a new business?

Not sure what the payback on this is, how much you have to dry out to make this worthwhile. Figuring if you freeze dry food over 5 years maybe it pays itself? I am sure the quality beats MREs big time!
 
You dont want to get into rebuilding these pumps. Everything you own will be covered in some of the worst low viscosity oil. The pumps arent necessarily plug and play, they require attendance at times and break down frequently if you dont have a vapor trap in place and ballast them. I've seen the aftermath three times of them catching on fire because of stupid button pushing analysts.


Membrane ne pumps are less maintainance, but don't pull as hard a vacuum.
 
Just a note. The vacuum pump size is irrelevant. The cold trap surface area and temperature is. Once you pull vacuum. If the system is sealed. It should maintain vacuum.
edit also. Thank you for this thread. I have mad food allergies. I have serious interest in food prep.

the pump runs pretty much constantly once it gets into the "dry mode." It runs so long it gets hot. It's not simply pulling a vacuum once and done. So it gets quite a workout.
 
The trap should be condensing out all the water. If the pump is sucking water molecules, it's going to condense in the compression portion of the vacuum pump. Water in the oil will trash a pump damned fast.
The pump will run constantly, but there should be very little output.

Edit#2.. I have trashed many a pump when cooling failed on my cold trap.

http://www.spscientific.com/freeze-drying-lyophilization-basics/
 
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So it's been a while since I ran a load because I sliced off a huge chunk of my finger which required stitches. The pain of actually keeping my finger out of the way of everything was something I didn't anticipate. It made the simplest of tasks difficult, time consuming and tiring. I couldn't clean dishes well due to trying to keep my finger dry, the pain, and the coordination as I did this to my dominant hand. I also record my podcast on Tuesdays so I can't have my machine running while I'm recording and it's not something you can really shut off and then turn back on. My microphone picks up noises very well. I often pick up sounds from the street when large trucks go past but I can edit that out or pause recording.

But things are looking up and I just put this batch in. This batch - green peppers and onions (yep, need more) Fajita chicken, spanish "rice" aka cauliflower, and then pork stuffed peppers. I need more peppers and onions as well as spanish rice but I will get that on the next batch.

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So just over 24 hours in the FD and I have another batch of food. I screwed up and didn't weigh any of the food before putting it on the trays. And then I didn't take a picture of all the trays before I started packing it up. The chicken started out as 2.5 lbs before we cooked it and ate dinner the night before loading the trays for the FD. So maybe 1.5 lbs on the tray?
This is the full tray of fajita seasoned chicken:
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The chicken that didn't get packaged individually weighed in at just over 8 ounces. It was this whole tray plus a little as I only packaged 2 individual meals for my backpacking trip as I had a very small amount of peppers and onions left over, otherwise I would have done 3 or 4 individual meals. The individual meals I "eyeballed" when packing and then weighed the packages after. They were 2.6 ounces and 2.7 ounces respectively.



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Next up is the tray of pork stuffed peppers. This started out as 4 peppers. Didn't weigh it ahead of time. Total weight after FDing was 4.1 ounces. I made this into 2 individual meals.
Click image for larger version.
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The Spanish "rice" (cauliflower) I "eyeballed" for serving size. Most of these were 0.4-0.5 ounces. I ended up with 5 servings but thinking those will be rather small so I will likely bring extra sides and maybe make 3 servings into 2.
Click image for larger version.
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I figure at this rate plus breakfast was just over 2 ounces, I can carry 3 real meals a day for at most 10 ounces, packaged. That would mean 7 days of food would only weigh 4.375lbs! This doesn't account for nuts and other "snacks" I might carry but this is INSANELY UL! Even if I had to carry twice as much food for 7 days, not an issue!

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Any finger pics? How did you slice it?

I was using a mandolin slicer and thought I could get "1 more slice" without the safety thing to hold the veg. I was sort of right. [shocked]
 
Next batch is in.

ETA: This was copied from another forum I posted to. It's a backpacking forum and I am going on a trip in about a week so the weights are super important to me and them, as well as the calories per ounce.

The 2 trays on the left are my own mix that I call chicken & sausage gumbo, because "gumbo" sounds better than "glop." The 1 1/2 tray is my home made breakfast sausage - pork I ground myself and dry herbs/seasonings and no fillers. The other half a tray is diced red peppers, sauteed. The trays on the left were in the freezer overnight so that's ice on top of the food. the other trays were in the freezer for just a short amount of time so no noticeable ice.

The Gumbo weighs 4.5lbs, twice as much chicken as sausage and I assumed 20% liquid weight. There is some liquid, but not much. My estimate is that there is a total of 4051 calories in this food and I expect to get 7 servings from it. 578 cal/serving.

The breakfast sausage is 29oz and 96 cal/oz cooked for a total of 2,407 calories. This should give me 14 servings to add to my eggs. 172 cal/svg or 86/svg if I halve it. But I may cut the serving in half. Will need to decide after I have the eggs done and bagged with all their goodies. I like sausage, peppers, mushrooms and cheese with my eggs.

*note - my first batch I Fded eggs and estimated that dry weight of 1.9oz equaled 3 large eggs (as I had put in a dozen eggs). 3 large eggs fried are about 300 calories, that means my eggs are about 150cal/oz.
* I am using nutritiondata.self.com for my estimates on calorie counts

The diced peppers have a total of 300 calories and should be good for about 8 servings. It's 8oz cooked weight. This also goes into my eggs. That's 37cal/svg or 74 if I double the serving. I do like my peppers!

When everything comes out I will weigh everything. I know how many servings I can get from what went in so then I will take the dried weight and divide it into servings.

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How are you preparing your eggs before you freeze them?

scrambled and cooked. When I am backpacking I just add boiling water, re hydrate and heat at the same time.

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scrambled and cooked. When I am backpacking I just add boiling water, re hydrate and heat at the same time.

additionally, many people with this machine will scramble them and FD raw, then powder them. I might do that for LTS. Right now I have a backpacking trip I need to get ready for. Next batch will be eggs, mushrooms, cheese, and something else, likely a dinner meal.
 
Some questions answered and some pictures of the setup

Someone sent me a few questions so I thought I would post my answers as well as a few pictures for everyone.

Keep in mind that I have very little space so a lot of my decisions/opinions/etc are a direct result of what I am comfortable with in this space. Also, I am currently prepping for a backpacking trip so my loads are mixed loads. On mixed loads you want to be careful what you FD as odors/flavors can transfer between items. My PM to them follows:

I have the original, medium one. It has 4 trays.

A few points on why I did not opt for the larger unit.
This unit size is new. And the pump is the same size. Many say that's not important but I'm not 100% convinced. The new units, I believe, are back ordered. They initially made 100 of them and offered them out to existing customers first. This was just a couple months ago IIRC.

I think a larger unit will take longer to run a cycle all the way through. Not sure. So then you would likely end up with the same amount of food per hour of FDing possibly.

I have found that I actually have to work to get this unit full. Part of that is due to the fact that I have to get ready for a backpacking trip and I don't want to eat the same thing for a week so I need to make a variety of foods to load up the trays. This isn't a problem if you want to run a load of just chicken or whatever.

We are in a small apartment, so we are also limited on kitchen, fridge and freezer space. This affects us in so many ways. Not only do I have to cook every day but I am trying to stock up leftovers to get the trays loaded and I don't really have enough fridge space for many leftovers or freezer space to load a tray, put in the freezer to pre freeze (not necessary but helpful especially liquidy foods) until I get 4 trays full. Also, the very small kitchen means I have to cook food and then clean and then cook the next food I want on the trays, and on. So a simple task like cooking a couple dozen scrambled eggs is a bit more difficult than if I was in a normal sized kitchen. Yes, my kitchen is really THAT tiny! Think slightly larger than a tiny house. I am 5'3" and can stand at the sink and touch the fridge, stove and dishwasher without moving my feet.

If I had the larger unit I think at this point I would have a really hard time filling it. I found that with my large dehydrator I actually used it less than I wanted to as I always felt "bad" about running it partially full. Which is really silly since that's a unit you can open and close to add more foods as they are ready. If you have the room for doing large batches then I say go for it!

The other thing in my case is that I want to FD COOKED food so that all I need to do is re hydrate with boiling water and I can eat it. You do not need to cook your food first. This would greatly cut down on your prep time to get the trays loaded up. I am also not just FDing individual ingredients but complete meals in a lot of cases so again, a time suck.

Pump maintenance: This is only my 3rd load so all I have had to do so far is drain a little off each time before I run a load. Not really sure why but that's what the book says to do. I noticed that this time there was a bit of crud in the oil so I may filter it before the next batch but I just realized I don't have any extra oil on hand so I may not do that. As the oil degrades it can take longer for the pump to do it's part and your cycles take longer. I'll keep an eye on that and probably order some oil right after I finish this reply. LOL But other than that, the maintenance doesn't look so bad, even to me. Mostly I think people these days are used to tossing things rather than doing maintenance or just driving somewhere and having someone else do their maintenance.

Location: Like I said we live in a pretty tiny apartment. Initially it was sitting on our dining table and it took up most of one half of the table. Quite annoying. We got a "kitchen cart" recently and it's much better. Now it sits between the table and the half wall that divides the kitchen and dining area. Maybe I'll post some pics later. This is very near our living room and tv. I used to be able to sit at the table and watch and hear the tv. Can't do that if the FD is running. Also can't listen to tv from kitchen with it running. But I can still hear the tv if I'm sitting in the living room as the machine is behind me and not between me and the tv. Also, our bedroom is just off the dining area. We sleep fine with it running. I am a very light sleeper so if it changes from freezing to drying (which is when the pump kicks on) it wakes me but like I said, I am an extremely light sleeper. I wake when the sprinklers turn on in the summer in the middle of the night (cause that's when you run them in TX) from the water gentky hitting the windows.

If you are going to put this in your basement you shouldn't have any problems hearing it upstairs. Just don't put your pump on anything attached to the walls that will transfer the vibration through to the walls. "I" would hear the vibrations. LOL seriously!

I hope this helps.

That's the end of the message I sent.

And now for some pictures!
The unit wedged between the table and the half wall. Good thing we don't actually need to use all our seating!
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That's about 90% of the tiny kitchen. As you may be able to see the sink and counter are full of clean dishes. We have three sections of counter space that are about 20" W - either side of the stove and to the left of the sink and then 1 section to the right of the sink that's a whopping 35" wide! IMG_3399.JPG
Another perspective from the "edge" of the dining area looking into the kitchen.
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