Hi there! I’m so sorry we just moved across the country, and I had not been paying good attention to our page here 🤦♀️ from all the things I have researched to doing this process - I tablespoon freeze dried breastmilk to 2 ounces of PRISTINE water. Recommended is to heat the water a bit to the temperature of what breastmilk would have been naturally which will help the product rehydrate better as well!
That is a great question. I would imagine that yes you could and would get a similar consistency as a powder but when it comes to the nutritional value I feel there would not be much. The freeze dryer provides different methods that the dehydrator cannot replicate. I understand the price, it was a serious investment! Let me know if you hear of anyone using a dehydrator so I can better educate myself ♥️
Hey! Sorry for my delay, TH-cam is not notifying me when comments are coming through. Anyways 🤩 If you are referring to when the trays came out and I was testing to verify completion, if your food/product feels cold to the touch it still has moisture in it, therefore needing more time. Now feeling the bottom of the tray is a different story. I usually try to defrost them, but sometimes forget about selecting that option 🤦♀️😅 human error and that’s why I usually only gage completion based on, in this case, the milk feeling ice cold or like nothing. Let me know if that cleared it up, I can try to reword that! Thanks for watching!
Oh my goodness! I just replied to your other comment and saw this. How exciting! I’m sorry that it took me so long to respond, we just moved across the country so I haven’t got back into the flow of videos and responses. How did your cycle girl!?
We looked into getting one after my first and sadly never got around to order one. This time around we are actually getting one! I really do wish I had gotten one last time because I pumped just shy of 20,000oz in 6 months.
Understood! When we had our son I had no idea about such an amazing idea (we didn’t have a freeze dryer yet!) I definitely recommend because LADY that’s an INCREDIBLE amount! If your little one doesn’t use all of it and you end up not needing it for consumption, it is amazing for ALL THINGS SKIN! I would love to hear follow up if you invest and try this out!
Hi there! So sorry for my delay - in this case I only used that ziploc to show the breastmilk and what it looked like going through the different stages. I would usually use the regular Mylar bags that I seal our products in regularly. Then you can just tenderly massage the bag to powder it down. When it comes to the oxygen absorber, if you are keeping your items sealed in a mylar bag and opening it every so often to get other product out as long as you were quick, I feel like you would not need to replace it but if you were going to just clip it and close it, that wouldn’t be enough to retain freshness. iIt would need to put it into some other type of vacuum, sealed container or just air locking Container if you were going to be using it quickly. Hope this helps, but let me know if you have further inquiries ♥️
Hi I'm just wondering what the room temperature is like when you're doing this? Did you have any issues with the frozen bricks melting too fast before transferring them to the trays?
Great question! At this point when doing these cycles we were in our basement (standard below level basement) usually about 68° roughly. Low humidity overall and doing this in early fall season. Amazingly, we did not have issues with the prep for this cycle or the later ones. Not sure of your location but if you are having melting issues take into account the humidity, that might be causing some problems. If humidity is not a factor I might recommend gathering all of your “bricks” cut off the tops right below the ziploc and have them standing cut side up and keep them in the fridge as you are prepping them. At which point you could slide them out evenly onto your trays when you are ready to go or after you have them on the trays throw them back into your freezer to make sure they are good and solid before starting a cycle. Whew…that was a hefty response 😅 sorry so wordy! Thanks for inferring and let us know how it goes or if you have questions!
Sorry about my delay! Our total time was about 36 1/2 hours of run time and I had checked it midway when it said it was done and ended up at that longer time. Which to be honest happens often. Why it is always necessary to double check before really digging in. I did see somebody on here give advice of when you’re freeze drying and the cycle thinks it’s done let it stop, take it out weigh it, run it for one more hour and if you see any amount of decrease in the weight, you know that it’s still losing moisture and then just to keep checking like that. It is one of the longer cycles we have done, that’s for sure! Thanks for watching!
I know there are a lot of things that you can do to customize the machine to what you want but we have not changed any settings on the freeze dryer to dry anything it’s more been about changing and adjusting how long we freeze and dry. With my limited experience I feel like the lower the temperature for drying probably the more nutrients are kept in your food, but I do not have experience with that low of a temperature so far.
Thank you for your video... I am going to be freeze drying my DIL breast milk... she had her baby 2 weeks ago.. and she is a milk machine... :) They camp alot and she will be headed back to work in May so the freeze drying will be so handy for her
You’re so welcome! Thank you for watching! I love to hear that you’re helping her, what a wonderful dynamic ♥️ I would love to hear how this process goes for you and have no doubt that she appreciates all your help!
I apologize with my delayed response, my account is failing to let me know when there are comments are posted… Anyways! Glad to help answer your question, this scraper is from a kit I purchased on Amazon a few years ago www.amazon.com/dp/B07S1NGH6J/ref=cm_sw_r_as_gl_api_gl_i_9MMM3R4NRBB2V9FVXKRR?linkCode=ml2&tag=betterthanide-20 If you aren’t interested in sourdough kits and only a variety of scrapers this would be a nice option for 1/3 of the price. Thanks for watching!
Contrary to many other freeze dryer pages I have not changed the settings on our unit 🫠 in other words I just put things in and run a cycle, no temperature changes on my part. Pretty much the main difference I see is amount of time that it takes which is always different depending on how much moisture something has, and how long it takes to dry. Hope this helps but let me know if you have other questions 🤩
Hi! I am a new mother and our son is 4 weeks old! We would love to have the opportunity to freezedry some breastmilk for later use. This would be a great help as we are currently residing in an apartment with small limited freezer space. Would you be willing to sell us this service?
Congratulations! You are doing amazing work over there ♥️ it really is an awesome thing to have especially on the go if you were in a pinch. I would never say no to trying to help someone- I am not sure on the parameters for keeping everything travel safe to get it to us (dry ice maybe) but you let me know what you’re thinking. Keep up the hard work 🙌🏽
This is awesome! How do you reconstitute it? Is there a ratio?
Hi there! I’m so sorry we just moved across the country, and I had not been paying good attention to our page here 🤦♀️ from all the things I have researched to doing this process -
I tablespoon freeze dried breastmilk to 2 ounces of PRISTINE water. Recommended is to heat the water a bit to the temperature of what breastmilk would have been naturally which will help the product rehydrate better as well!
Can you use a food dehydrator and get the same result? Just wondering the freezer dryer is expensive on Amazon
That is a great question. I would imagine that yes you could and would get a similar consistency as a powder but when it comes to the nutritional value I feel there would not be much. The freeze dryer provides different methods that the dehydrator cannot replicate. I understand the price, it was a serious investment! Let me know if you hear of anyone using a dehydrator so I can better educate myself ♥️
What do u mean by cold to the touch when u thought the milk pieces annd bottom of tray . and do u defrost ur trays before taking them out ?? Thanks
Hey! Sorry for my delay, TH-cam is not notifying me when comments are coming through.
Anyways 🤩 If you are referring to when the trays came out and I was testing to verify completion, if your food/product feels cold to the touch it still has moisture in it, therefore needing more time. Now feeling the bottom of the tray is a different story. I usually try to defrost them, but sometimes forget about selecting that option 🤦♀️😅 human error and that’s why I usually only gage completion based on, in this case, the milk feeling ice cold or like nothing. Let me know if that cleared it up, I can try to reword that! Thanks for watching!
I'm going to do my first batch tonight.
Oh my goodness! I just replied to your other comment and saw this. How exciting! I’m sorry that it took me so long to respond, we just moved across the country so I haven’t got back into the flow of videos and responses. How did your cycle girl!?
We looked into getting one after my first and sadly never got around to order one. This time around we are actually getting one! I really do wish I had gotten one last time because I pumped just shy of 20,000oz in 6 months.
Understood! When we had our son I had no idea about such an amazing idea (we didn’t have a freeze dryer yet!) I definitely recommend because LADY that’s an INCREDIBLE amount! If your little one doesn’t use all of it and you end up not needing it for consumption, it is amazing for ALL THINGS SKIN! I would love to hear follow up if you invest and try this out!
Do you need to replace the absorber each time you open the bag and close it back? And what do you prefer instead of the ziploc bag?
Hi there! So sorry for my delay - in this case I only used that ziploc to show the breastmilk and what it looked like going through the different stages. I would usually use the regular Mylar bags that I seal our products in regularly. Then you can just tenderly massage the bag to powder it down. When it comes to the oxygen absorber, if you are keeping your items sealed in a mylar bag and opening it every so often to get other product out as long as you were quick, I feel like you would not need to replace it but if you were going to just clip it and close it, that wouldn’t be enough to retain freshness. iIt would need to put it into some other type of vacuum, sealed container or just air locking Container if you were going to be using it quickly. Hope this helps, but let me know if you have further inquiries ♥️
Hi I'm just wondering what the room temperature is like when you're doing this? Did you have any issues with the frozen bricks melting too fast before transferring them to the trays?
Great question! At this point when doing these cycles we were in our basement (standard below level basement) usually about 68° roughly. Low humidity overall and doing this in early fall season. Amazingly, we did not have issues with the prep for this cycle or the later ones.
Not sure of your location but if you are having melting issues take into account the humidity, that might be causing some problems.
If humidity is not a factor I might recommend gathering all of your “bricks” cut off the tops right below the ziploc and have them standing cut side up and keep them in the fridge as you are prepping them. At which point you could slide them out evenly onto your trays when you are ready to go or after you have them on the trays throw them back into your freezer to make sure they are good and solid before starting a cycle.
Whew…that was a hefty response 😅 sorry so wordy! Thanks for inferring and let us know how it goes or if you have questions!
How long did you set for the Breast milk? How many hours?
Sorry about my delay! Our total time was about 36 1/2 hours of run time and I had checked it midway when it said it was done and ended up at that longer time. Which to be honest happens often. Why it is always necessary to double check before really digging in. I did see somebody on here give advice of when you’re freeze drying and the cycle thinks it’s done let it stop, take it out weigh it, run it for one more hour and if you see any amount of decrease in the weight, you know that it’s still losing moisture and then just to keep checking like that. It is one of the longer cycles we have done, that’s for sure! Thanks for watching!
What temperature did you dry at? I've heard i should dry it at 90F
I know there are a lot of things that you can do to customize the machine to what you want but we have not changed any settings on the freeze dryer to dry anything it’s more been about changing and adjusting how long we freeze and dry. With my limited experience I feel like the lower the temperature for drying probably the more nutrients are kept in your food, but I do not have experience with that low of a temperature so far.
Thank you for your video... I am going to be freeze drying my DIL breast milk... she had her baby 2 weeks ago.. and she is a milk machine... :) They camp alot and she will be headed back to work in May so the freeze drying will be so handy for her
You’re so welcome! Thank you for watching! I love to hear that you’re helping her, what a wonderful dynamic ♥️ I would love to hear how this process goes for you and have no doubt that she appreciates all your help!
Can you link the scraper tool you are using on the tray to scape the milk off the tray please?
I apologize with my delayed response, my account is failing to let me know when there are comments are posted…
Anyways! Glad to help answer your question, this scraper is from a kit I purchased on Amazon a few years ago
www.amazon.com/dp/B07S1NGH6J/ref=cm_sw_r_as_gl_api_gl_i_9MMM3R4NRBB2V9FVXKRR?linkCode=ml2&tag=betterthanide-20
If you aren’t interested in sourdough kits and only a variety of scrapers this would be a nice option for 1/3 of the price. Thanks for watching!
May I ask what temperature you used?
Contrary to many other freeze dryer pages I have not changed the settings on our unit 🫠 in other words I just put things in and run a cycle, no temperature changes on my part. Pretty much the main difference I see is amount of time that it takes which is always different depending on how much moisture something has, and how long it takes to dry. Hope this helps but let me know if you have other questions 🤩
Hi! I am a new mother and our son is 4 weeks old! We would love to have the opportunity to freezedry some breastmilk for later use. This would be a great help as we are currently residing in an apartment with small limited freezer space. Would you be willing to sell us this service?
Congratulations! You are doing amazing work over there ♥️ it really is an awesome thing to have especially on the go if you were in a pinch. I would never say no to trying to help someone- I am not sure on the parameters for keeping everything travel safe to get it to us (dry ice maybe) but you let me know what you’re thinking. Keep up the hard work 🙌🏽