I bet $20 to my friend that he would make another heat pump related video within a year of the "Heat Pumps Are Not Hard" video. I won, the heat pump water heater video was released 11 months later. EDIT: Spelling
This machine is also used to salvage wet books, since it can make the water evaporate without heating the paper too much. This process is the best solution to try and save libraries and archives’ collections if they get wet, as in floods and hurricanes. It's funny to think that if a library gets wet the best option is to put the wet books in freezer cells and store them until there’s one of these machines available. They are not that widespread yet and the process is very slow, but it does work. I have not finished the video yet, but I really hope Alec will try wet paper in there just to see what happens since I've never seen the process take place! EDIT: he did not try it. Please everybody help me get this comment to his attention so maybe we can get a demonstration in connextras 🙏
@@woolymittens yeah this doesn't sounds like a useful "you should buy it and use it for this" as much as it's just trivia about the machines and their non-expected uses. Interesting though, i can imagine it a bit weird when a company doing food processing gets a call from a library... xD
@@Flynn217something I would have started with spaghetti using ground beef. Excellent. There are a lot of videos with lots of recipes. Weighing the food before and after drying gives you the water required for hydration. Btw, when the machine say the cycle is done but the food is not. You put the food back in and run the freezer for another 10 hours or so. You don’t throw it away.
I am an engineer who was specializing in "novel" refrigeration machinery until I went to the dark side and became management. I also bought one of these machines from this company to play with and understand the process. The control board will happily spit out a pretty nice log file automatically if you plug in a flash drive to the USB port. I was able to understand what it was doing and its control points by using that log.
I love this lmao. I keep telling my manager I would rather lose my mind dealing with design and development than become a manager of a team and dealing with adult babies with weaponized autism (we all have it in engineering design face it).
I'm impressed that Alec made it thru an entire video about a device with a refrigeration unit without once explaining what Latent Heat of Vaporization is.
A-A steamed hams reference?! At this time of year, At this time of day, In this part of TH-cam, Localized *entirely* within the Technology Connections Freeze Dryer video?
When rehydrating the milk, put the powdered milk in first, then add little water and mix it in to form a thick sludge, ad bit more water to thin it and then pour in the rest of the water. Works much better and faster.
Yeah, I think that's what we did when we lived in the Arctic (fresh stuff flown in on small aircraft all winter for $$$$ per pound) and used a whole milk powder called "Klim". (Clever name, huh?) Also my process for making hot cocoa.
I gotta say I really appreciate the disclaimer of you being an influencer at the beginning. Not because I was going to buy a freeze dryer, but because its super nice to see someone with an audience recognize and respect the responsibility of having a trusted voice. Thank you for being awesome!
Seconded. Especially since most inf*encers will take the opposite route and, perhaps even subliminally, try to convince you to buy something you probably don't actually need.
Regarding the 'Magic Physics' for your ice buildup problem: The cold spot does not attract the Water/Ice, the gaseus water moves to every place with roughly the same chance, but the cold area is the place where the water looses it's energy and is significantly less likely to leave again, so it accumulates there.
To add on that: the opening that the pump uses is much, much smaller than the surface of the drum and at such a low pressure you're not really creating a significant flow of gas to the pump, you're again just waiting for the molecules to more or less randomly find their way to the pump. In short: if the drum wasn't cooled during the drying, the pressure would significantly increase and the whole thing wouldn't work anymore.
@@tz8785 Once the air is out, almost all the pressure comes from the water vapor (assuming you didn't e.g. try desiccating something alcoholic). What you want is to remove that as quickly as possible to keep the pressure down and not impede further evaporation. The best way to do this is to just cool down the drum to the point where the vapor freezes on it. Yes, the pump would also keep the pressure relatively low compared to ambient conditions, but the pressure would be far higher than what can be achieved by just keeping the drum ice cold. Again: Tiny nozzle versus pretty much all of the surrounding surface.
Freeze dried water is fantastic. You can easily carry several hundred gallons of it in a backpack and just need to add water to it and stir for about 30 seconds to rehydrate it. You can go camping alomost anywhere for weeks without worring about taking bulky water containers with you!
Make sure to leave it in the freezer for at least 4 hours before using the freeze-dryer though; Otherwise, your freeze-dried water can still go bad quickly, as it still contains some moisture in the center. A warning from experience.
One argument you forgot, there are factories creating this stuff more effective. For the price (and energy cost) you can order a lot of freeze dried stuff online, and the deliver it to your doorstep.
Food Safety manufacturing manager here: please note - controlling microbiological growth using water activity prevents growth, it does not kill the bacteria. Rehydration will allow the bacteria to grow again. Best practice is to manage bacterial loads on the pre-process materials, as well as limit duration post Rehydration. Heating to >165F isnt a bad idea as well.
@@psirvent8 you are absolutely right, but to me this advice points out something more important: some people think that a regular freezer "disinfects" things so they will actually put dirty things in the freezer and call it good after a bit. This advice seems to also cover "please don't fall for this myth. It doesn't work with freeze driers either." If there is too much bacteria before it goes in, there is too much bacteria after it comes out.
I work at a freeze dry company, they have a contract with both NASA and the Military. The freezers used in the freezing process goes to -40 degrees and we still have to defrost and clean them on a regular basis to manage bacteria mainly listeria, we go throughout the processing plant and clean, and sterilize everything. In-between products made and in specific intervals regardless of production needs. This is done with all parts of the process from cooking to packaging the finished product. So yes only open the freeze dried food when ready to consume. Consume as you would any other food, treat the rehydrated food as fresh. If not consume even quicker like as soon as fully hydrated ready to eat, or opened. And the majority of the food we produce is meant to be rehydrated, and not eaten in its dried form. Think chili mac, fettuccine Alfredo, chicken and rice etc
THANK YOU! I'd already determined that the cost of the machine was way too high for the amount of use I'd get out of it, but you helped me solidly slam that door shut, fasten 12 separate bolt locks closed, and throw away all the keys!
I didn’t even realize this video was an hour long! The perfectly delivered puns and knowledge made this video feel seamless. I see a Technology Connection video and I click!
TH-camrs who upload long, detailed videos on any subject I'm interested in are my favorite people in the world on Fridays. I work in accounts payable and the dead time between submitting the vendor payments for approval and my boss finishing what he's doing, having his Friday meeting with the CFO, then actually approving my work and getting it back to me...well, let's just say if I worked from home I'd probably be practicing my video golf game (I got REAL good at it during the pandemic!), but in the office there's TH-cam.
As someone who owns a small freeze drying company i love the video, although a note about the gummies and stuff, run them on Candy mode, you have to increase the temp in the settings menu to 135-150 (just do 150) peach rings can work do check any candy you use doesn't have modified corn starch as the top 5 ingredients, use albanese branded gummies, run harder candies for 3-4 hours of dry time and then run gummies for 8-10 hours. For liquid products you could run them in ice cube trays you have to run them for an extra 24 hours probably, i personally despise the silicone trays from harvestright. On the note of peppers being hotter, capsaicin is a pain in the ass molecule due to being an oil so it is not disturbed at all and it spreads out in your mouth as soon as your saliva interacts with the dried pepper. -edit- silly me for forgetting this dont and i mean don't filter and reuse the oil, it will ruin your pump dont be like me and follow directions on the package, just buy new oil "Black Gold" is a good brand.
how much expense would buying all new oil every 20 cycles do? Also nice info. I suppose modified corn starch is just too damn absorbent to ever let go of its water, eh? That stuff is a godsend in the kitchen. just instant thickener, no flavor alteration. Perfect for stabilizing whipped cream.
@@KairuHakubiIt's not that much oil. My hubby uses a similar pump to fix the a/c in the car. He changes out the oil. It's a small amount. The atmospheric humidity when changing the oil should be paid attention to. He's had issues with anything over 60% humidity. It gets in the oil and inside the pump and ruins the viscosity.💦 Which defeats the purpose of the oil.😢
You must have missed the "I found it quite sublime" at the beginning. Sublimation is the change of state directly from solid to gas (ice to water vapor), literally "freeze drying".
This is the best commercial for prepackaged freeze-dried food I've ever seen. Yeah it's expensive but you just buy it with no hassle, no prep, no huge machine and endless days of work.
Like a lot of things, it's trial and error-lots of trial and error-but you know what is needed, and then you are set. Like the oranges, they are closed cells, and they need multiple puncher points to dry them.
Freeze dried strawberries are the secret to why my homemade icecream is so good. I can jam a lot more strawberries into the same volume than you can with fresh and the flavor is way more concentrated.
12:49 Hi! I work with Ultra High Vacuum equipment! The reason the water deposits on the sides is due to the how the particles in the chamber interact. The air molecules are basically bouncing around the chamber randomly and the pump is just scooping them out when they reach the vacuum pump. Imagine a crowd of people PACKED in the lobby of a hotel and milling about, but they only change direction when they hit the walls or each other. The only way out is through the automatic revolving door that scoops people out as they bounce into it. More people will bounce into the door when there are more people in the lobby to bounce off of, but the fewer people inside, fewer objects to bounce off of and the lower the odds that they'll bounce into the door. Now, you're still introducing more people to the lobby from the elevator, but it's still not packed enough for them to push into the door like they had earlier. Now, because the walls of the lobby are a bigger target than the door opening, and the walls are now cold, the particles will instead condense on the cold surface and freeze, effectively removing them from the chamber. Hope that helps!
Wouldn't this be solved if you chilled the incoming air first so you could keep the interior walls no colder than the food inside? After all, if the food is net losing moisture then the rate at which ice on the walls sublimates should exceed the rate at which it condenses just like it does for the food if they aren't colder no? Or do they do this delibrately so it happens faster or they can do it cheaper?
@@petergerdes1094 chilling air would do very little the pressure is so low the air doesn't act like fluid any more it more like little ball bouncing around and temperature is just average speed of those balls so going from 25c to -20c only slow the particle speed by like 100m/s which isn't all that much at this scale. as for relative sublimation rates your description would only be true in steady state conditions. Since the trays have heaters the water molecule in the food have more energy to escape and fly into the chamber while the ice on the walls is colder so its less likely to escape and fly into the charmer this small difference in average energy levels is what drives the whole process. fun fact if you take this process to the extreme by cooling the wall to near absolute zero you can "pump" all the gas out of the chamber not just water but the air as well by freezing it. These are called cryo pumps / cryo panels in the high vacuum industry and can actually "pump" much faster than typical turbo molecular pumps.
@@petergerdes1094 What incoming air? This only works under a decent vacuum and the reason to cool the chamber wall is to prevent the gaseous water from increasing the pressure.
The only person I know that has one of these does A LOT of back country camping. Think almost every weekend from spring to fall and almost every other weekend in the winter. They couldn't find any prepackaged meals they really liked so they bought one of these and now make their own freeze dried meals that they like better and can customize to their own taste. Those pre pachaged meals are not cheap and they were going through enough of them to make the initial cost make sense. They also don't mind the work so that's not a huge issue. As a side benefit for them (and me occasionally) they've started making fruit and vegetable powders. The cherry tomato powder (which is just freeze dried cherry tomoatoes you wizz up in a food processor) is particularly good to use on and in things.
A few years ago this is exactly what put HarvestRight on my radar! I don't go camping nearly enough to make it worth the investment (and when I do, it's canoe camping so weight isn't as much a concern with food) but definitely a strong target market there for these machines.
i can also see this being useful if youre in an area that gets extreme weather, or if youre worried about natural disasters. just have a lot of bottled water in storage too!
@@coolthinghere6853If you just want an emergency supply in your house just spend 2k on canned/dry goods and be done with it. This only makes sense for hikers, homesteaders and legit "doomsday spend 40 years in a bunker" preppers.
Hello there Alec, I really enjoyed watching your video on lyophylisation, big props! Because I´m a pharmacist - or as we Europeans like to call it, an Apothecary - I can add a little something to this: If I recall correctly you made instant coffee with this. In the industry this is achieved with spray drying. You put solutions, emulsions or suspension and atomize it via a nozzle. Then you add some fairly warm or even hot air stream to the mix and it gives a nice powder or granulate which can be reconstituted with water easily. As far as I know that is widely used in the food industry to, for example, produce instant coffee or powdered milk. But it has some neat pharmaceutical applications as well! Lyophilisation is more heavily used in pharmaceuticals than in food, because it is much more expensive in equipment and time - as you have thouroughly demonstrated. And in medicine price is way less important than in food products. Now to my little hypothesis: instant coffee tastes awful, because of the heated air applied. This will denaturate proteins and oxydise some aroma molecules in the coffee, thus leading to the altered, inferior taste. Love your content in general, hope this finds you well. Have great weekend! Greetings from Germany!
I used to design freeze driers so I appreciate this video. The last one I designed before leaving the industry had an drying chamber 8m long, 2.5m in diameter and was designed to dry out archaeological artefacts.
PLEASE do an in-depth video on washing machines and/or dryers. Your video about the dishwasher has completely changed clean I can get my dishes, I need the same thing for my clothes!
I'd like a breakdown on dryers as far as why automatic stop always stops while clothes are still damp, why air dry is limited to 60 minutes even though it required 4-10 hours depending on the contents, and why the lint colletor doesn't catch more lint
all the same points from his dishwasher video apply to washing machines. dosage according to load and water hardness is key. to be fair this is all in the instructions.
As for the difficulty with reconstituting the milk: if you mix the desired amount of powdered milk with a *very small* amount of cold water, you should be able to create a slurry which will allow the fat to emulsify. Then you can add the rest of the water. I do this when making cocoa with pure cocoa powder (I don't use sugar). It faces the same basic challenge due to the high amount of fat in cocoa powder.
Yes, this is correct. Milk contains spherules of fat that stay suspended in water, but removing the water destroys the vesicles, and allows the oil to coalesce. To resuspend the fats, you need to add water and lots of stirring. If you do it with full water, it spills and froths and churns. Just use a tiny amount until it's all dissolved, then fill to 1/3 and stir hard (scrape bottom corners), then fill to 1/1 and it should come out nice. Labor saving devices...
I was just writing up the exact same comment and figured I would take a look through the comments to see if anyone else already did since this is a pretty new video. Would like to see the results of the milk reconstitution using this method :)
I use a freeze dryer at my work to prepare samples for analysis for total mercury content and other geochemical processes. Our system is set to -50 C and 0.165 mbar, there is no programmed end time. We will leave our samples for at least three days , then if it passes a visual inspection, we would then physically check each sample for a "cold" feeling. If our sample feels cold to the touch, that implies a piece of ice is still remaining in the centre and that we need to continue the process. We have an 18L collection chamber and often if the ice on the collector is too thick we need to pause the run defrost the collector, dry the inside of the unit, and then continue the run. I can only imagine that this at home unit is going to be closer to our older 2.5L unit where we had to defrost the system every two days so that the samples would maybe dry in a week.
I've been thinking, this machine will absolutely do a perfect job every time... if you just run it for multiple days in a row. Its trying its best to not seem like a giant waste of time and energy so its attempting to cut it off at the earliest possible moment to reasonably suspect its probably maybe dry. If you want to have food until 2050, you don't need it to be sort kinda dry, you need it to be effing surface of the sun dry
We use it at work as well, since according to some literature freeze drying biomass intended for the extraction of genomic DNA increases the yeild and decreases the shearing of DNA. It also allows for easier homogenisation and breakage of cell walls, which furthers the ammount of DNA extracted. We also run it for around 48 hours at 0.5 mbar and then for another hour or so at 0.05 mbar final drying pressure, with -50C temperature.
@@skeetsmcgrew3282 I wonder if it could save a bit more power by just not running the vacuum pump continuously. It has pressure gauges, so it could run the vacuum pump only when necessary and probably more as a pulse alongside the heaters. As the system dries I'd expect the pressure to also increase less and less with each heater cycle which would be easier to see if the pump wasn't constantly running.
@@alexmcnabb7957 Mostly coastal sediments, but some of our first nations partners are also interested in the clams and fish that they consume as their communities develop infrastructure.
Also from everything I've seen just investing less than $100 in a vacuum sealer can help prevent freezer burn and extend foods freezer life. Between that canning, drying, and fermenting and just buying some already freeze dried stuff you'd maybe want in an emergency seems more realistic. A small solar power system to run a chest freezer probably costs less too and can be sized up to include some other fun things that are useful.
@@LUM-kb2rl for the standard type sealer you can just buy a roll of the plastic and make your own bags, it’s very cheap. The vacuum chamber style bags can be bought cheaply if you buy in bulk (by the 1000)
@@LUM-kb2rlif you're worried about that, get rolls. You can cut them to size, seal one end and save about $10-20 per roll as opposed to buying premade bags. Plus in many cases, vacuum bags are reusable a few times as long as you cut close to the seal. I regularly use the vacuum sealer and I have only had to buy new rolls once in the last 6 years.
@@burtenplays Good vacuum sealers aren't cheap either. The small home units can and will suck liquids and fail at the seal and fall apart with heavy use and the professional units that don't have those issues can cost hundreds of dollars. Granted, it's not freeze dryer expensive but an 80lb vacuum sealer that's 1800w at peak that also costs 700 bucks is still an investment and time sink. You ever processed 180lbs of meat with a 50 dollar vacuum sealer? Yeah, don't.
I have some experience with larger and bench top pharmaceutical lyophilizers. The end of drying cycle is triggered by increase in the product temperature. This happens when there is no water to evaporate in the product being dried and the heat being supplied to product is no longer being used for evaporating the water, since is all gone, and the products starts heating. This spike in the tray temperature is picked by the sensors on the tray ( as you showed on one of the trays) and used to take the cycle to the next stage. In commercial units; this sensor may sit in one of the product container or on tray for accurate measurement. So in the unit you showed the decision is made on the basis on the sensor on one of the trays ( and the state of drying of the food on that tray). It also means that having different food type in one lot may not be a good idea, as you have experienced. Enjoyed the video!!
Dude, for reconstituting you need to look to the astronauts for what they do. Most importantly you want to weigh the ingredients before and after so you know how much water is missing. Eyeballing it absolutely will lead to very dry or very moist. And then it's basically directly add warm water, warm not directly boiling and let it sit for a bit. Preferably sealed with the moisture against it directly. Though the thought of you waving a slice of freeze dried ham in front of a mister is incredible and worth subscribing to the other channel for.
@@chaos.corner If nothing else, I bet freeze dried items that would go into a soup or stew would cook up fine even if they weren't good raw. I bet something like the powdered milk would work great in baked goods or similar where you just add the needed water with the wet ingredients and the milk with the dry.
@@LanceThumping Yes. Someone else said the dried fruits were great in home-made icecream. Though I got some that were packaged and they were pretty good just as snacks.
You should also look at astronauts as pretty much the only people for which this makes sense. Not because of the long shelf life, but because of the weight. This way they can transport loads of food up there and recycle water and rehydrate the food. If all you want is to preserve some stuff and the weight is not really a problem, then plain old freezing is a better option. Especially if you do add some packaging to PREVENT freeze drying.
34:44 This is also why the oranges didn't dry. Citrus is basically a double-protected collection of individually-wrapped juice pellets. The water needs a reasonably porous path out or it will remain trapped where it is.
Freeze drying works pretty well with fresh herbs especially when compared to conventional dehydration-try mint, basil, cilantro parsley, spring onions, etc.
For small amounts yes. But for large amounts freeze drying is too expensive and time consuming. I can keep basil fresh and green by blanching, vacuum sealing then freezing.
@@N1withaskillet is it because the method is really good or like with fruits where the cost of the equipment is so high that it only makes sense to freeze dry high quality products?
Fun fact: Freeze dried onions is what goes onto the McDonald's Cheeseburgers, Hamburgers and Big Mac. (Most other burgers like the quarter pounder and similar use fresh, chopped onions) We had these big bags of freeze dried onions and would just dump them into a big bowl of water to soak. After that you just scoop them out with a big sieve. So basically you freeze dried some freeze dried onions when you freeze dried your cheeseburger.
Can confirm as someone who's currently working at a mcdonalds. The bowls, atleast the ones here are more so cylindrical and tall container with their own sieve you can lift out and a lid. You let them sit in the fridge soaking for an hour at the minimum.
REfreezedried. Nice. You know I think those actually contribute positively to mcdonald's burger flavor. Fresh onions aren't quite the same as rehydrated-in-condiments dried onions.
@@Joel_Inosin onions _really_ don't stay fresh after being cut as I found out when I tried premaking all my work lunches for the week. By thursday, the onions started tasting bad. then the price of lunchmeat skyrocketed and I just started eating chicken patties on buns.
I was a freeze dryer operator for a few years at a pharmaceutical. Industrial Freeze dryers are so massive, it’s fun to see a miniature version of what i was operating. Our cycle was 3 days long and slowly ramped up the shelf(tray temp in this case) temperature mid cycle to make sure the medication would maintain its integrity. Lyophilization is such a cool process.
@@sarcofaygo6218 That is why it is only used for really valuable things. U can't do it fast without destroying the properties of the thing u want to preserve.
I appreciate the heck out of this video. I have been served as advertised. I no longer feel like I have to buy a freeze dryer to find out if I would like it. My thing is I just *REALLY* like freeze dried apples. I get tired of buying the bags of them in grocery stores though since they are a little pricey. Now I know that I would much rather continue to pay that price then to pursue the full-time job it would be to make my own. Thanks man!
Freeze Dryer can be split into 2 operations. Like a Washer Dryer does. Freeze first, then get a Vacuum chamber for dying, you could find some basic metal racks. As on his previous videos, splitting the cycles is more efficient for volume and energy. You can Freeze dry at home, we al have freezers, we only need the Vacuum unit. Making powered milk sounds really good.
This is very similar to how MBE (Molecular Beam Epitaxy) chambers work. The vacuum lowers the pressure below the vapor pressure of the water, and the heating elements raise the vapor pressure of the water to make it evaporate faster. Pumping itself does not have to be a “mechanical” process. It could be chemical, thermal, electrical as well. In this situation, the walls of the chamber act like the cryo pumps and cryo panels in MBE chambers. They work by lowering the temperature of whatever hits them so far that that the molecules/atoms can’t re-evaporate. Cryopumps are some of the fastest pumps that exist and have an insane capacity. They are also one the primary reasons that an MBE chamber can be brought to 5e-11 Torr or roughly one ten-trillionth of atmospheric pressure. Also, many oils will largely disappear.
To reconstitute the milk, make a thick mud first, then thin in out. It will take much less effort. Also do this when making chocolate milk or hot chocolate. You will thank me if you try it. ;)
Everybody I know who has one of these (yep, there's more than one) eventually ended up using them for business purposes. They all independently came to the conclusion they'd have to get paid to use it. (They all do pretty well, actually.)
The whole time watching my brain kept coming up with things to sell using it lol. Honestly does seem like a good business assuming you figure out what freeze dries best and what people around you actually want. Though "premium" instant coffee sounds like a hands down no brainer for money making lol. One of my first thoughts was trying different sauces in it to see what worked, anything that you could bring back like eggs would be awesome!
Yeah it's a point I'm surprised he didn't make but unless you've got an overwhelming requirement to freeze dry your own food outsourcing the freeze drying is a way better option. Especially if you want survival rations
I see freeze dried candies at a lot of gas stations now, marked up several hundred percent. Seems like not too bad of an idea. I love the freeze dried skittles and am willing to fork out $7-$9 for a bag every once in a while.
For reconstituting powdered milk, add small amounts of warm or hot water to the powder to make a smooth paste, this helps to emulsify the milk fat. Continue adding aquilots of water while stirring or whisking.
You and Aging Wheels are my favorite influencers. Because of you guys, I now have this awesome mid-50s, Eastern European, 600cc, two-stroke combination dishwasher-pinball machine-film developer-betamax player.
19:00 the reason for this is because you need saliva to be able to taste things. The receptors that pick up taste are actually on the side of the papillae on the tongue and so saliva is needed to bring the food molecules into the grooves in between each papillae. Essentially your saliva is reconstituting the food and is required to do so so you can taste
Ok, a few comments: I got a slightly smaller version of this same product at Costco for $1600 -- which was the upper limit on what I'd pay. It has four trays that are a bit slimmer, but more than enough for my needs. Your opening statement about the 'preppers' and the rabbit hole of hell about freeze drying on TH-cam is PRECISELY what I said a few weeks ago to some people. OMFG. You nailed that one. Things I've found: - Pineapple - surprisingly good - Berries - awesome - lowfat yogurt - OMFG SO BAD I WANNA DIE - and even worse, don't mix with water! - caramels - BLEW UP SO BIG - but quite interesting - ice cream - awesomesauce!
the base model was even cheaper before covid. So price aside, as you cant really justify or not justify someone's budget, i wonder if TC would still recommend against anyone from buying one? They weren't much more expensive than many other luxury kitchen appliances.
@@nadca2 Even if it's cheaper, there's still a ton of prep and the cost of storage, time, money, prep, energy bills, sound pollution which might keep everyone up at night.
The "medium" (smallest they have) is currently $US 2500 from Costco. That's a lot to spend just to DIY freeze-dried marshmallows and strawberries. I'm ***almost*** foolish enough to do it.
Re: Freeze Drying Ice Cubes: iirc, James Hoffman did a video on making his own instant coffee with a freeze dryer much like this one, and he was able to use ice cube trays to freeze the coffee in a regular freezer, although he removed the cubes from the trays and smashed them up before loading into the dryer trays.
@@robertlovett5529 that's correct. First thing I thought of when the coffee in this video was tried was "wow, you must use a decent amount of cream and sugar in your coffee, cause Hoffman did the same thing with straight coffee and it came out terrible".
"For physics reasons im not quite sure of" Physicist here! There are two reasons to keep the walls of the freeze dryer frozen. First is a technical limitations of many vacuum pumps, generally speaking vacuum pumps don't respond well to water vapor so we want to keep it out. The second reason is that when you are heating up the solid water it is evaporating at quite a high rate. Even at atmospheric pressure going from solid to liquid is a roughly 700x volume increase. Additionally, at the low pressures required for freeze drying the efficency of vacuum pumps drops dramatically (applied science does an excellent explanation of this in his video on a glass diffusion pump) so they can't pump nearly enough water vapor from the chamber to keep the pressure down. Thanks to the refrigeration cycle it is very easy to make a really cold surface. When the water molecules run into the cold walls they loose energy and end up sticking together, forming ice in the process.
To anyone who needs to hear it: Instant coffee is pretty much as good as the coffee it was made from. The original nescafe was a war ration product that used leftover beans that no one else wanted, and most of the lowest price instants today still use crappy coffee. But, there are many brands available in mainstream grocery stores that reconstitute to produce a cup of coffee which is pretty much coffee-house, fresh pressed espresso taste and mothfeel, and it breaks down to like $0.10 a cup. Medallio Doro, Cafe Bustelo, and surprisingly even the Starbucks Premium instant are all very, very good. And if you like espresso drinks, like lates, instant espresso is a great way to make those at home by microwaving a mug of milk, adding your instant coffee, and then mixing/frothing with a $10 handheld milk frother. No scullded milk mess, no espresso machine.
And do not sleep on Korean and Japanese instant coffee. When I had to fly a lot of budget airlines in the very early morning I literally lived and figuratively died on keeping good instant coffee in my bag. Maxim Kanu (single origins) and Maxim White Gold (Xylitol sweetened) are my go to. If you can do a little fancier than instant there are really nice sachet bags and pop out pour overs. The sachets are more airplane friendly since the logistics are the same as making tea. The pop out pour overs are more for surviving the miserable office coffee and your hotel.
@@m_cabral i've had those and i feel like i'm reading the ramblings of insane people. No, they do not taste anything as nice as a fresh coffee. I'm glad you like them but you're either lying or have entirely shot tastebuds. Same as when i hear people ramble about japanese canned coffee, christ.
@@rasurin I didn’t say it was the same as an anaerobic estate small batch Rwandan light roast or even a nice “boring” blend of fresh coffee from a quality brand. I’m saying it’s blowing away Folders crystals and the burnt rubber they serve in the locations I mentioned. That is a *very* different litmus test.
@@rasurin I love _some_ of the Japanese canned coffee, but for different reasons than I like good, fresh coffee. It's like enjoying Chef Boyardee but nowhere in your brain connecting it to real red sauce pasta. That said, Japanese canned coffee is still better than every American canned coffee I've tried when I was desperate for something caffeinated and coffee-ish. At least the Japanese stuff tastes like "coffee milk". The American ones all taste like they were brewed in an ashtray. WHY!?
A lot of people have mentioned backpacking but the other use I've seen for these is homesteading. If you're doing it right you're going to have way too many eggs, vegetables, fruit, herbs, etc. half the year and very little or none the other half of the year. If you're on solar you're also going to have way more available power at the exact same time. Put the two together and you can freeze-dry all that extra food. Most of the people I've seen doing it just powder all their extra veggies and herbs and use them in soups and stews and baking; reconstituted eggs work just like regular eggs for cooking and baking.
I spent part of my childhood in North Idaho so I get where the "homesteading" and "prep-er" crowd are coming from. Idk something about paying a company $3000 for a machine doesn't scream "self-sufficient" to me.
@@sadslavboy well we aren’t trying to be shut ins, we have the ability to be fully off grid but there’s no reason to at this point. Also the cost of an item doesn’t make it less “self sufficient”, tractors are expensive as hell and they can help set you up to be way more sustainable.
So, the Scoville scale was originally based on _dilution_ until it was no longer detectable. Gas chromatography has since taken over, but the scale still reflects the original “100% is 16 million” scaling as a unit. So, by removing water from the jalapeño, you’re increasing the percentage of the substance that is capsaicin, and decreasing the percentage that is not. Thus, the result really should be higher on the Scoville scale.
@@SimuLord You can create homeopathic anything if you want. But then you shouldn't consume any water ever, as there might've once been a single particle of something nasty in it which will cause your instant death.
Plus, capsaicin bonds better to oils than water, so removing the water from the jalapeños give more contact area to the oils on your skin or whatever food you’re putting them on. Super concentrated little jalapeño burst, given even more power to strongly bind to oils in foods! It sounds pretty good tbh.
I think I can try to explain the inconsistency of the timer. In an unrelated industry, semiconductor, I used to work in assembly of the FAB machines. One of our tests for the seals was to use a very powerful vacuum machine, effectively turning whatever portion on the interior assembly/subassembly you're handling into a vacuum chamber. The vacuum machine also had it's own mass spectrometer in-line with the vacuum-exhaust. We would test the seals with a small jet of He3 which notoriously is able to get through any seal. The on-board spectrometer was calibrated to detecting Helium, however the same unit could also be calibtrated for Hydrogen, Copper, Oxygen, Nitrogen, and H20. A lot of your failed attempts are of foods that effectively have their own sealed "skins", like the grapes, and what I think is happening, just like how we would detect an unsatisfactory seal with a sharp uptick on the spectrometer read-out, something similar is happening when vapor suddenly escapes without consistency from whatever food is being processed. Though I have no idea if even freeze-dryers are equipped with mass spectroscopy instrumentation, it sure would explain the exorbitant price. Yes I know vacuum chambers are not cheap on their own, but spectrometers are even more-so ridiculously expensive.
I actually like freeze dried ice cream sandwiches more than regular ice cream sandwiches. I did just remember I have 3 in my desk so I should eat one now
Gift shops always make me feel so depressed and hopeless. They have this magical ability of immediately negating 90% of the prior enjoyment of whatever otherwise fun and/or interesting exhibit I just paid (probably quite a lot of) money to visit.
The major use case you’re missing: hikers. It doesn’t matter that the food tastes bad while dehydrated- the idea is to make shelf-stable food you can rehydrate on the trail for FAR cheaper than the commercially available hiking meals. It doesn’t make sense for casual campers, but for people who do months-long thru-hikes or bundle up their whole family for long camping trips, it would pay for itself over time.
This is kinda why I was considering this. I'm not backpacking yet, but over the last couple years I've been slowly building up a backpacking kit. These machines hold some promise for that, but the price tag is a bit too much. Maybe if they drop down to under $1k I could consider it, but for now, I just like musing on the potential.
@1WolfFan my family has had a freeze drier for a long time (not from this company and a completely different design. Most notablyin the door being a dome held in place by a bar with center compression point that solves the issue he was having with the hinges & latch) and we used it to make stuff for taking on extended hiking and camping trips. Mind you there plenty of things it's not a good option for but for the things it works well for you can reduce the volume and weight considerably making it well worth the investment for the extra supplies you can carry.
I backpack and make all my own food, and I use a normal dehydrator. I'm sure that a normal dehydrator will be more versatile than the freeze dryer. And drying then rehydrating meals is incredibly easy
It still takes some hiking time to pay for itself, it costs about as much as a couple of hundred meals and the ingredients do still cost money. That said I have a friend who does geological mapping for a living and then goes hiking for fun on his days off. He says it payed for it’s self in 6 months and he charges friends and co-workers to run their own trays in it
I dunno if anyone's mentioned it but thank you for all the work on the captions! It's so nice having reliable captions for what is actually being said on screen and the little extras tucked into them are a treat. As always, great video, and thank you for all you do for the captions
This was my thought as well. Gastro-engineers would love this thing for making flavored powders. I bet it's fantastic for things like alcoholic drink flavorings. Or frostings like you mentioned. I think the critical thing is that you really need to understand the chemistry of what you're doing to make this work. For example, freeze dried potato powder could probably be reconstituted and pressed into fry shapes before deep frying into french fries. Meats and breading should probably be separated and reconstituted independently, then combined to make the final "nugget"-like product. All of which is fascinating if you're planning to work with SpaceX on the loadout for their Mars supply ships in a year or two. As a "fun" cooking method though? It will probably go about as well as your average person trying to use a dryer to make banana chips. Won't work nearly as well as they expect and they'll hate it almost immediately. Sort of like TC! .😂
I didn't know there were folks going beyond canning, canned goods, & MREs, though my take away is that no one really needs to go beyond those & that a chest freezer is probably good enough for anything that can't reasonably be canned & or found in an MRE
As a gardener of mostly super hot peppers, I love my freeze dryer. If you want to analyze what your freeze dryer is doing, just plug in a usb drive. It will download csv files containing time, pressure, and temperature data. Also if you don't want ice and moisture build up during freezing just close the vacuum valve during the initial cool down.
Look to backpacking meals for inspiration. Smaller pieces of things like meat (also makes freeze drying faster) rehydrated with a carefully determined but still rough ratio of boiling water to freeze-dried product. Let sit for 5-20 minutes (depending on product density) and enjoy! Boiling water heats and hydrates without any significant further cooking.
Also there's an easy trick to calculating rehydration ratio (at least with traditional dehydrating but don't see why it wouldn't work for FD)-just weigh the food going in and then the dried product, and add about the difference to rehydrate (at least as a starting point to then trial and error from, since dehydration and rehydration aren't precisely symmetric processes)
Also, I think instead of trying to preserve individual ingredients, preserve full dishes. Like, make a soup, stew, or cassarole-like dish out of finely cut ingredients, and then preserve that instead of trying to freeze dry whatever individual components.
Regarding the oranges: you really should've sliced them instead of peeling and separating the segments. The membrane just prevented the moisture from escaping.
Thank you so much for this video! I was genuinely thinking about getting one of these at some point, but the more I researched, the more it seemed to be...less than a good idea. The cons started to outweigh the pros, and I'm glad you were able to put together this extremely thorough review.
To incorporate water in to the milk or coffee, make a thin paste/slurry first. Mix only a few teaspoons of water in to the powder, stir it up, and let it sit for a while. Finally, add the remaining water. This hydrates more of the individual granules allowing them to incorporate in to the final mix more readily. This is how i make hot cocoa, using real chocolate, which doesn't like mixing with water.
The way I'd put it is that adding too much liquid tends to produce clumps which can then freely flow around your mixing implement, making them hard to break up. In contrast by mixing a small amount of liquid in first, it's easy to break up those clumps and evenly moisten everything.
Assuming three meals a day, and that you can source ingredients for $10 less than you can buy a backpacking meal from REI, and you value your time at $0 an hour, you only need to supply 100 days of backpacking to make back your investment. I value my time, and don’t backpack nearly enough to justify that cost, but it is pretty neat. I’d buy one for 1k in a blink
To be honest, there isnt much to a freeze dryer. If, and this is a weight bearing if, you where capable of programming a PID controller OR willing to manually cycle every step it would be around a thousand dollars to get an DIY kit together sourcing out machining that you cannot do yourself etc. And if your a decent fabricator with access to some scrap fridges you could probably make one for less then $500 much less even depending on what you have around.
I use a commercial version for my farm. I sell them at the farmers market and gain profit from food that would normally be composted or thrown out. Freeze dryers are not for normies
@AnonymousAnarchist2 I DIY'd a setup a couple years back... It was definitely a process and pain in the @ss understanding how it worked with almost no content on freeze drying in a DIY freeze drier... Also, using homemade super coolant was it's own fun bag of safe handling..🤦♂️ They get the price down to 1k and it would definitely be worth it just as a matter of convience and ease of use... great content btw... very thorough and well explained... sublimation is one of the more confusing concepts to process cause it uses temp differential and vacuum pressure to do what dry ice does at room temperature...🤦♂️
Fun fact the cold walls "attracting" the vapor is similar to technology used in the deposition of some metals on silicon wafers and other materials. A very high vacuum is needed, but a pump can only get rid of so much air. They lower the temperature of the sides so that the random motion of the gas bumps the remaining atoms into the wall. The cold wall essentially takes all the kinetic energy from the moving particle which causes it to essentially be "removed". I imagine the freeze dryer is similar. The water vapor can't be pulled by the pump so it gets frozen to the wall as it bounces around.
So... No magic of buying 2 of them? So glad you got this video out before November. Really was considering one of these and enjoy the long format. On another note can't wait for your November videos.
You forgot burying earthenware ceramic crocks below the frost line in your backyard. My mother in law used to do that around my aspen trees in order to store her Kimchi. Rest in peace grandma Kim.
@@newq They've only made their way into the midwest recently, and still not anywhere near small towns. Closest many people can get is Chinese takeout. Heartbreaking, really... Korean BBQ goes HARD.
Very much this. I repaired a PVC drain pipe today and people think I’m some sort of savant. The HVAC company that broke the drain line and refused to fix it offered to, for $900, add a 3/4 PVC to 1/2” barb adapter and tap into the nearby plumbing air vent system. Both the tubing and using the air vent is against residential code in my area. Why ten minutes of gluing things together is a) An unknown skill and b) not what the AC company just did to resolve the issue they caused… is beyond me. Home repair and prepper TH-cam is great for saving thousands on keeping your home running.
Definitely useful skills in that community if you disregard the doom saying aspect of things. I think it's smart to have emergency supplies like a small gas camping stove, non perishable food on hand even in a functioning country the power does get cut off from time to time, the water may be contaminated or storms hit that may prevent you from going to the store etc and I found some of their food preparation useful for making camping meals.
I really with there were versions of this machine that are around or under $1000. however, I can think of many niche application for it, and reading the comments is an absolute joy. "prepping" seem like the worst use case for this machine. my favorite applications include : - drying flooded things (like books) - preparing food for camping trips, trucking or any other job that requires being away from home for long periods - making interesting dishes and ingredients : drying out spices and herbs, tomatoes, making powdered milk and eggs... - science stuff (mostly turning solutions into powders) - making dog snacks from bad meat (like pig ears or other animals you butcher yourself) - selling the stuff you make with it, so you can benefit the community around you. I think that you would need the niche applications and/or have several applications in mind, because a single one isn't enough. Especially if you have a neighbor who owns one. I think it would be cool for several people to own one together in order to maximize the usage and to lower the upfront costs.
I have worked a bit with vacuum chambers and I may have an explanation for the ice build-up. So once under a certain pressure gasses stop behaving like ever expanding fluids and more like solid balls bouncing on solids. The condenser traps the water that touches the walls of the chamber as ice. The vacuum pump could remove the water eventually, but that could take too long; unless another vacuum pump designed for even lower pressures was used, which would yeah, do the job but it would still take some time.
28:00 interesting thing I learned about instant coffee. For the best prep, you should use a little cold water in the cup, stir in the crystals, then add hot water after. And it's WAY better then. Maybe a strategy for the freeze dried coffee.
Funny you mention the scenario of the spouse wanting to get a fancy machine and trying to convince their partner that it's a good idea. This happened to me in early-ish married life when hubbie thought getting a food dehydrater would be a great idea. By that time I was working outside the home and managing 2 young kids, so didn't have the energy to learn something new, and told him so. He bought it anyway, and it sat unused in the basement in its original packaging for at least 25 years. My older daughter rescued it as I was selling the house. She went on a dehydration binge this summer to make her own backpacking meal kits. She now has a couple dozen Mason jars of dried food which will last a while. It seems like a much more energy- and time-efficient way to preserve food, even considering the taste and quality differences. I had to block off time to watch a 1-hour video, but it was totally worth it! Thanks for your research!
I’m really glad I opted to just use an oven or my toaster over to dehydrate rather than buying one even when I had a good reason to. I do love when something you thought would be going to waste gets used up or becomes really helpful.
Actually, we have one (we bought a used one), but mostly because we have our own vegetable garden and certain things we like year round. So, we mostly freeze dry onions, garlic and spices. We only use it a few times a year. About the freeze dried cheeseburger, throw it into a blender and sprinkle it over your self made potato chips. I'm pretty sure this is close to how Lays do there special flavor varieties. Surprisingly soup also works well. Actually, most things that you can already buy in a powdered form works great in a freeze dryer. It is just that you now know exactly what is in the powder. For the same reason we created our own baby food. Not only did we save a lot of money doing this (helps paying off the freeze dryer ;-), we like to know what we feed our children. It is also a fun activity to do with the children. They love taking out the trays, take the herbs and turn them into powder. But only for a hour or so and than they want to do something complete different.
When I worked at a non-profit that had a breakfast program, I would have LOVED one of these. We would get PALLETS of near-expiry eggs, milk, and fruit from the food bank, and so much would turn before being able to be used. Being able to preserve them for use even just weeks or months later, it would have saved so much food waste.
But the question is: which would be more cost-effective, buying the freeze dryer, having a volunteer spend inordinate amounts of time preparing the stuff, then spending the money on electricity to freeze dry the food... or just waste the pallets of food but use the money you would have spent freeze drying to just purchase new food wholesale? I'm guessing it'd probably lean more towards the latter than the former.
@@cmgeorge12 "having a volunteer spend inordinate amounts of time preparing the stuff" There is not inordinate amount of time needed to freezedry milk. You simply pour the milk from your container into the trays located in the machine and press start. Milk is the perfect food for this. Egg is a close second where all the work is cracking the eggs into the tray and throwing the shell away.
I'm a backpacker/bikepacker/kayaker, and a freeze-drier would be invaluable for preparing lightweight meals for backcountry adventures. After watching this video, it makes sense that most freeze-dried backpacking meals are pretty wet to begin with so they can be reconstituted effectively with water. Things like chili, pasta, stews, rice dishes, etc. I think it would be interesting/educational to see this tested with more complete home-cooked meals rather than base ingredients.
One thing to bear in mind is that these seem to be a bit of a fad at the moment. If they're as annoying to use as it seems, that means there's likely to be a glut on the used market in the next couple of years. Like treadmills and scuba gear.
@@garydiamondguitarist Honestly? I got an air fryer basically for free and it get used a lot. It's basically a fast convection oven. Getting much more value out of it than the instant pot.
Strawberries work really well because they have low sugar, and nearly all the flavor-including the sweetness-is actually volatile chemicals that you lose when you heat them. So freeze drying concentrates them, and you can add them to other strawberries (preferably macerated) to get double strawberry flavor.
![PASULOL รามเกียรติ์ ตอนที่ 4 นนทกพบรัก [Ramakien Ep.4: Nonthok in love]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tMUQgmZzf_A/mqdefault.jpg)
Alec really loves the "box that makes things hot/cold wet/dry" genre
Don't we all love the science box?
Three of those things are good puns which go with "box".
And I'm sure Alec already has years of content to come prepared.
I bet $20 to my friend that he would make another heat pump related video within a year of the "Heat Pumps Are Not Hard" video. I won, the heat pump water heater video was released 11 months later.
EDIT: Spelling
Boxes are the best shape, after all ;-)
This machine is also used to salvage wet books, since it can make the water evaporate without heating the paper too much. This process is the best solution to try and save libraries and archives’ collections if they get wet, as in floods and hurricanes. It's funny to think that if a library gets wet the best option is to put the wet books in freezer cells and store them until there’s one of these machines available. They are not that widespread yet and the process is very slow, but it does work. I have not finished the video yet, but I really hope Alec will try wet paper in there just to see what happens since I've never seen the process take place!
EDIT: he did not try it. Please everybody help me get this comment to his attention so maybe we can get a demonstration in connextras 🙏
yup thats a good connextras video , "i wet a book and then freeze-dried it "
Comment for more engagement so he will do this
Having lived for 67 years and NEVER having had to attempt to salvage a wet book, I think I'll roll the dice and not purchase a freeze drier.
@@woolymittens yeah this doesn't sounds like a useful "you should buy it and use it for this" as much as it's just trivia about the machines and their non-expected uses.
Interesting though, i can imagine it a bit weird when a company doing food processing gets a call from a library... xD
Plus, you may have to repair your flooded freeze drier before you can use it to dry out your flooded books.
>It's $3,000.
>It requires a lot of prep and maintenance.
However.
>It gives me access to infinite freeze dried strawberries.
Tempting.
Hah those were my exact thoughts xD
Well not infinite, just like 100 a day.
@@Flynn217something I would have started with spaghetti using ground beef. Excellent. There are a lot of videos with lots of recipes. Weighing the food before and after drying gives you the water required for hydration.
Btw, when the machine say the cycle is done but the food is not. You put the food back in and run the freezer for another 10 hours or so. You don’t throw it away.
$3000? Can it be made with a $100 mini freezer and a $100 vacuum pump?
@@ctrlaltdebuggotta have proper drainage for the liquid when it condenses.
I love everything about this video. Few content creators could say 'this works flawlessly, and I hate it' in such a professional manner.
I am an engineer who was specializing in "novel" refrigeration machinery until I went to the dark side and became management. I also bought one of these machines from this company to play with and understand the process. The control board will happily spit out a pretty nice log file automatically if you plug in a flash drive to the USB port. I was able to understand what it was doing and its control points by using that log.
This needs to be bumped up. technology review can't be complete without reviewing log files!!
It needs more 🪵s.
Comment for more engagement so he'll do this
yes. I was thinking this. I was hoping he wouldn't have to tear one down, given the cost.
I love this lmao. I keep telling my manager I would rather lose my mind dealing with design and development than become a manager of a team and dealing with adult babies with weaponized autism (we all have it in engineering design face it).
I'm impressed that Alec made it thru an entire video about a device with a refrigeration unit without once explaining what Latent Heat of Vaporization is.
I feel robbed honestly.
I was waiting for him to say let's look inside because I bought two.
@@Kriss_L I don't think the magic of buying two of them is strong enough to overcome a 3k$ price tag 😂
This machine is a prepper's best friend. heh They even freeze passed away loved ones... oh no, not to eat them just to preserve them lol
@@BillAnt oh you can eat them too
A-A steamed hams reference?!
At this time of year,
At this time of day,
In this part of TH-cam,
Localized *entirely* within the Technology Connections Freeze Dryer video?
...Yes.
Aurora Borealis.
@@jul1440
May I see it?
@@mothman5114 ah... No.
@@mothman5114 Mmm.... No
When rehydrating the milk, put the powdered milk in first, then add little water and mix it in to form a thick sludge, ad bit more water to thin it and then pour in the rest of the water. Works much better and faster.
Yeah, I think that's what we did when we lived in the Arctic (fresh stuff flown in on small aircraft all winter for $$$$ per pound) and used a whole milk powder called "Klim". (Clever name, huh?)
Also my process for making hot cocoa.
Water needs to be warm too but not hot enough to cook the milk.
Just buy evaporated milk
@@amoongoos nah
@@amoongoos Euw!
I gotta say I really appreciate the disclaimer of you being an influencer at the beginning.
Not because I was going to buy a freeze dryer, but because its super nice to see someone with an audience recognize and respect the responsibility of having a trusted voice.
Thank you for being awesome!
Seconded. Especially since most inf*encers will take the opposite route and, perhaps even subliminally, try to convince you to buy something you probably don't actually need.
Based af tbh.
Check out the subtitles, there's often additional musings at the end and this time there's one that says "Does this make me an anti-influencer?"
2.5 m subs, i remember when he had thousands. How times fly, eh?
Regarding the 'Magic Physics' for your ice buildup problem:
The cold spot does not attract the Water/Ice, the gaseus water moves to every place with roughly the same chance, but the cold area is the place where the water looses it's energy and is significantly less likely to leave again, so it accumulates there.
To add on that: the opening that the pump uses is much, much smaller than the surface of the drum and at such a low pressure you're not really creating a significant flow of gas to the pump, you're again just waiting for the molecules to more or less randomly find their way to the pump. In short: if the drum wasn't cooled during the drying, the pressure would significantly increase and the whole thing wouldn't work anymore.
@@robdidopp7769 The running vacuum pump keeps the pressure down, but losing the effect of the drum surface probably still slows drying.
Right, but why not keep the walls no colder than the interior so you don't get ice buildup?
@@tz8785 Once the air is out, almost all the pressure comes from the water vapor (assuming you didn't e.g. try desiccating something alcoholic). What you want is to remove that as quickly as possible to keep the pressure down and not impede further evaporation. The best way to do this is to just cool down the drum to the point where the vapor freezes on it. Yes, the pump would also keep the pressure relatively low compared to ambient conditions, but the pressure would be far higher than what can be achieved by just keeping the drum ice cold. Again: Tiny nozzle versus pretty much all of the surrounding surface.
@@petergerdes1094 Because the water has to go somewhere, and if it's not on the walls it's gonna be on the food.
Freeze dried water is fantastic. You can easily carry several hundred gallons of it in a backpack and just need to add water to it and stir for about 30 seconds to rehydrate it. You can go camping alomost anywhere for weeks without worring about taking bulky water containers with you!
Make sure to leave it in the freezer for at least 4 hours before using the freeze-dryer though; Otherwise, your freeze-dried water can still go bad quickly, as it still contains some moisture in the center. A warning from experience.
Do not forget to pack your freeze dried water with a dehumidifier satchel, or else it will grow mold. 🤪
How can u freeze dry water, freeze drying removes water from stuff. Freeze dried water is nothing!
AKA salt?
@@Lightbulb-r5iyep, you get it
One argument you forgot, there are factories creating this stuff more effective. For the price (and energy cost) you can order a lot of freeze dried stuff online, and the deliver it to your doorstep.
Something the freeze dried stuff industry would say... ;-)
Freeze 🥶 dried food is generally very expensive
@@xephael3485 I now see why
@@xephael3485but you can still get a really big batch of profesionally dried food for 2500+USD.
Home canning is somewhat jarring 😂
This was probably the punniest video so far 😶
That's the line where I clicked the like button.
This was going to be my comment!
instantly dropped down to the comments when that landed. The deadpan delivery was a chef's kiss
i loved it!
It's up there with the banger from the Dietz video
Food Safety manufacturing manager here: please note - controlling microbiological growth using water activity prevents growth, it does not kill the bacteria. Rehydration will allow the bacteria to grow again. Best practice is to manage bacterial loads on the pre-process materials, as well as limit duration post Rehydration. Heating to >165F isnt a bad idea as well.
Which means only rehydrate freeze dried food just before eating it, not too long before, right ?
@@psirvent8 you are absolutely right, but to me this advice points out something more important: some people think that a regular freezer "disinfects" things so they will actually put dirty things in the freezer and call it good after a bit. This advice seems to also cover "please don't fall for this myth. It doesn't work with freeze driers either."
If there is too much bacteria before it goes in, there is too much bacteria after it comes out.
I work at a freeze dry company, they have a contract with both NASA and the Military. The freezers used in the freezing process goes to -40 degrees and we still have to defrost and clean them on a regular basis to manage bacteria mainly listeria, we go throughout the processing plant and clean, and sterilize everything. In-between products made and in specific intervals regardless of production needs. This is done with all parts of the process from cooking to packaging the finished product.
So yes only open the freeze dried food when ready to consume. Consume as you would any other food, treat the rehydrated food as fresh. If not consume even quicker like as soon as fully hydrated ready to eat, or opened.
And the majority of the food we produce is meant to be rehydrated, and not eaten in its dried form. Think chili mac, fettuccine Alfredo, chicken and rice etc
@@Ouvii even reheating spoiled food to "safe" temperatures is bad because the toxins produced by bacteria/mold will still be present afterwards
SO can I just put my food in bleach and then freeze dry it?
My man, bro, compadre, you are NOT an influencer. You are educator.
One can be both
@@hyperstimmed he's an educating influencer, there are none like him, he's the most Midwestern man I know, and I am a Midwestener!
Edufluencer 🎉
@@ScuzzySera Influcator?
@@andreasu.3546 i'm pretty sure "edfluencer" is a term people actually use, but "influcator" is very funny so i vote we switch to it
THANK YOU! I'd already determined that the cost of the machine was way too high for the amount of use I'd get out of it, but you helped me solidly slam that door shut, fasten 12 separate bolt locks closed, and throw away all the keys!
I'm killing time in the airport and 22 minutes in I realized this video is an hour long. I've never been happier.
I didn’t even realize this video was an hour long! The perfectly delivered puns and knowledge made this video feel seamless. I see a Technology Connection video and I click!
That really didn't feel like a one hour lecture on freezedrying.
23 minutes in I read this comment and realized the same thing 😂
TH-camrs who upload long, detailed videos on any subject I'm interested in are my favorite people in the world on Fridays. I work in accounts payable and the dead time between submitting the vendor payments for approval and my boss finishing what he's doing, having his Friday meeting with the CFO, then actually approving my work and getting it back to me...well, let's just say if I worked from home I'd probably be practicing my video golf game (I got REAL good at it during the pandemic!), but in the office there's TH-cam.
I also clicked without looking at time. Was thinking shorter video but was happy
As someone who owns a small freeze drying company i love the video, although a note about the gummies and stuff, run them on Candy mode, you have to increase the temp in the settings menu to 135-150 (just do 150) peach rings can work do check any candy you use doesn't have modified corn starch as the top 5 ingredients, use albanese branded gummies, run harder candies for 3-4 hours of dry time and then run gummies for 8-10 hours. For liquid products you could run them in ice cube trays you have to run them for an extra 24 hours probably, i personally despise the silicone trays from harvestright. On the note of peppers being hotter, capsaicin is a pain in the ass molecule due to being an oil so it is not disturbed at all and it spreads out in your mouth as soon as your saliva interacts with the dried pepper. -edit- silly me for forgetting this dont and i mean don't filter and reuse the oil, it will ruin your pump dont be like me and follow directions on the package, just buy new oil "Black Gold" is a good brand.
The comment section delivers. Wonderful expert advise, thank you! 🙏 👍
how much expense would buying all new oil every 20 cycles do? Also nice info. I suppose modified corn starch is just too damn absorbent to ever let go of its water, eh? That stuff is a godsend in the kitchen. just instant thickener, no flavor alteration. Perfect for stabilizing whipped cream.
@@KairuHakubiIt's not that much oil. My hubby uses a similar pump to fix the a/c in the car. He changes out the oil. It's a small amount. The atmospheric humidity when changing the oil should be paid attention to. He's had issues with anything over 60% humidity. It gets in the oil and inside the pump and ruins the viscosity.💦
Which defeats the purpose of the oil.😢
I've heard great things about the Albanese brand, just in general.
I just have to say, I've found the freeze-dried candy rabbit-hole is one well worth going down. ❤
I appreciate this one last long, effortful video before no effort November hits
But with a fun, lower effort food tasting interlude in the middle!
Alec discovers how to make hotel breakfast egg scramble.
Thanks for being one of my favorite influencers. I've bought so many heat pumps on your recommendations.
I'm on his heat pump of the month subscription plan.
How many heat pumps do you have in your collection now?
@@Vid_Master 12 million
That word makes my soul contort and my heart seize
It isn’t just the heat pumps… through the magic of buying two…
oh my god "personally i find calling that canning to be somewhat jarring" is CRAZY
I gasped at that part
I was gonna post that if it wasn't in the top ten, but here it is.
Right! That's such a wonderfully clever line.
That was the part where I pressed the like button.
You must have missed the "I found it quite sublime" at the beginning. Sublimation is the change of state directly from solid to gas (ice to water vapor), literally "freeze drying".
Now I get why the food industry likes using egg powder and milk powder so much. This process saves so much on storage and shipping costs
And saftey. Way WAY safer.
Safer as in cancer in 40 years
@@RipliWitani By freeze drying?
@@RipliWitaniI don't think you have any clue about what you're talking about.
@@richardmillhousenixon they probably screech about SEeD oILs randomly too
This is the best commercial for prepackaged freeze-dried food I've ever seen. Yeah it's expensive but you just buy it with no hassle, no prep, no huge machine and endless days of work.
See I took it the exact opposite way, if you eat those with any regularity this machine is worth it even at $3000
@@Boredaff Except you still need to factor in electricity, packaging and the angry jealous neighbor when the zombie-apocalypse begins.
Like a lot of things, it's trial and error-lots of trial and error-but you know what is needed, and then you are set. Like the oranges, they are closed cells, and they need multiple puncher points to dry them.
@@Boredaff Bingo. Freeze dried foods are extremely expensive.
@@degrotekoningwouter You are totally right. I'll need to get one big enough to fit my neighbor in.
Freeze dried strawberries are the secret to why my homemade icecream is so good. I can jam a lot more strawberries into the same volume than you can with fresh and the flavor is way more concentrated.
And they don't turn into little chunks of ice!
@@emilyrln exactly. Thats the most important part. Dehydrated fruit doesnt work anywhere near as well as freeze dried fruit for that reason.
It's how to make flavored frosting as well!
I was thinking of making pancakes or waffles with some powdered freeze dried fruit. I think the flavor would be really intense.
More strawberry per strawberry.
12:49 Hi! I work with Ultra High Vacuum equipment! The reason the water deposits on the sides is due to the how the particles in the chamber interact. The air molecules are basically bouncing around the chamber randomly and the pump is just scooping them out when they reach the vacuum pump. Imagine a crowd of people PACKED in the lobby of a hotel and milling about, but they only change direction when they hit the walls or each other. The only way out is through the automatic revolving door that scoops people out as they bounce into it. More people will bounce into the door when there are more people in the lobby to bounce off of, but the fewer people inside, fewer objects to bounce off of and the lower the odds that they'll bounce into the door. Now, you're still introducing more people to the lobby from the elevator, but it's still not packed enough for them to push into the door like they had earlier. Now, because the walls of the lobby are a bigger target than the door opening, and the walls are now cold, the particles will instead condense on the cold surface and freeze, effectively removing them from the chamber. Hope that helps!
Wouldn't this be solved if you chilled the incoming air first so you could keep the interior walls no colder than the food inside? After all, if the food is net losing moisture then the rate at which ice on the walls sublimates should exceed the rate at which it condenses just like it does for the food if they aren't colder no?
Or do they do this delibrately so it happens faster or they can do it cheaper?
the analogy still works with turbomolecular pumps but kinda breaks down when systems like diffusion pumps get involved
@@petergerdes1094 chilling air would do very little the pressure is so low the air doesn't act like fluid any more it more like little ball bouncing around and temperature is just average speed of those balls so going from 25c to -20c only slow the particle speed by like 100m/s which isn't all that much at this scale. as for relative sublimation rates your description would only be true in steady state conditions. Since the trays have heaters the water molecule in the food have more energy to escape and fly into the chamber while the ice on the walls is colder so its less likely to escape and fly into the charmer this small difference in average energy levels is what drives the whole process. fun fact if you take this process to the extreme by cooling the wall to near absolute zero you can "pump" all the gas out of the chamber not just water but the air as well by freezing it. These are called cryo pumps / cryo panels in the high vacuum industry and can actually "pump" much faster than typical turbo molecular pumps.
@@petergerdes1094 What incoming air? This only works under a decent vacuum and the reason to cool the chamber wall is to prevent the gaseous water from increasing the pressure.
@@drkastenbroti think it means molecules of water from the products rather than oxygen and nitrogen.
The only person I know that has one of these does A LOT of back country camping. Think almost every weekend from spring to fall and almost every other weekend in the winter. They couldn't find any prepackaged meals they really liked so they bought one of these and now make their own freeze dried meals that they like better and can customize to their own taste. Those pre pachaged meals are not cheap and they were going through enough of them to make the initial cost make sense. They also don't mind the work so that's not a huge issue. As a side benefit for them (and me occasionally) they've started making fruit and vegetable powders. The cherry tomato powder (which is just freeze dried cherry tomoatoes you wizz up in a food processor) is particularly good to use on and in things.
This.
This was why I initially bought mine.
A few years ago this is exactly what put HarvestRight on my radar!
I don't go camping nearly enough to make it worth the investment (and when I do, it's canoe camping so weight isn't as much a concern with food) but definitely a strong target market there for these machines.
i can also see this being useful if youre in an area that gets extreme weather, or if youre worried about natural disasters. just have a lot of bottled water in storage too!
@@coolthinghere6853If you just want an emergency supply in your house just spend 2k on canned/dry goods and be done with it.
This only makes sense for hikers, homesteaders and legit "doomsday spend 40 years in a bunker" preppers.
Hello there Alec, I really enjoyed watching your video on lyophylisation, big props!
Because I´m a pharmacist - or as we Europeans like to call it, an Apothecary - I can add a little something to this:
If I recall correctly you made instant coffee with this. In the industry this is achieved with spray drying. You put solutions, emulsions or suspension and atomize it via a nozzle. Then you add some fairly warm or even hot air stream to the mix and it gives a nice powder or granulate which can be reconstituted with water easily. As far as I know that is widely used in the food industry to, for example, produce instant coffee or powdered milk. But it has some neat pharmaceutical applications as well!
Lyophilisation is more heavily used in pharmaceuticals than in food, because it is much more expensive in equipment and time - as you have thouroughly demonstrated. And in medicine price is way less important than in food products.
Now to my little hypothesis: instant coffee tastes awful, because of the heated air applied. This will denaturate proteins and oxydise some aroma molecules in the coffee, thus leading to the altered, inferior taste.
Love your content in general, hope this finds you well. Have great weekend!
Greetings from Germany!
I used to design freeze driers so I appreciate this video. The last one I designed before leaving the industry had an drying chamber 8m long, 2.5m in diameter and was designed to dry out archaeological artefacts.
So the tinfoil hat guys were right! It wasn't the ancient Egyptians, it was a technological civilization that made all that mummies!
So you’re telling me,if I chop it into little pieces, this is a great way to dispose of the body?
The bodies exhibit eh
@@thekingoffailure9967 I mean, it will preserve the body, so kinda the opposite of what you want.
Yes. If you run it through the food processor after.
PLEASE do an in-depth video on washing machines and/or dryers. Your video about the dishwasher has completely changed clean I can get my dishes, I need the same thing for my clothes!
I'd like a breakdown on dryers as far as why automatic stop always stops while clothes are still damp, why air dry is limited to 60 minutes even though it required 4-10 hours depending on the contents, and why the lint colletor doesn't catch more lint
all the same points from his dishwasher video apply to washing machines. dosage according to load and water hardness is key. to be fair this is all in the instructions.
@@drkastenbrot Do you need to run the hot water first too?
@@zachm241
Sounds like your dryer vent is very clogged
We need this
As for the difficulty with reconstituting the milk: if you mix the desired amount of powdered milk with a *very small* amount of cold water, you should be able to create a slurry which will allow the fat to emulsify. Then you can add the rest of the water. I do this when making cocoa with pure cocoa powder (I don't use sugar). It faces the same basic challenge due to the high amount of fat in cocoa powder.
Just like Corn starch!
Yes, add a small amount of water and mix, then add a small amount of water and mix, then add... you get the point.
Yes, this is correct.
Milk contains spherules of fat that stay suspended in water, but removing the water destroys the vesicles, and allows the oil to coalesce.
To resuspend the fats, you need to add water and lots of stirring. If you do it with full water, it spills and froths and churns. Just use a tiny amount until it's all dissolved, then fill to 1/3 and stir hard (scrape bottom corners), then fill to 1/1 and it should come out nice.
Labor saving devices...
I was just writing up the exact same comment and figured I would take a look through the comments to see if anyone else already did since this is a pretty new video. Would like to see the results of the milk reconstitution using this method :)
oh that is so useful! I will absolutely keep that in mind for next time I want some cereal
Your personality is really comforting, I appreciate you
I use a freeze dryer at my work to prepare samples for analysis for total mercury content and other geochemical processes. Our system is set to -50 C and 0.165 mbar, there is no programmed end time. We will leave our samples for at least three days , then if it passes a visual inspection, we would then physically check each sample for a "cold" feeling. If our sample feels cold to the touch, that implies a piece of ice is still remaining in the centre and that we need to continue the process.
We have an 18L collection chamber and often if the ice on the collector is too thick we need to pause the run defrost the collector, dry the inside of the unit, and then continue the run. I can only imagine that this at home unit is going to be closer to our older 2.5L unit where we had to defrost the system every two days so that the samples would maybe dry in a week.
I've been thinking, this machine will absolutely do a perfect job every time... if you just run it for multiple days in a row. Its trying its best to not seem like a giant waste of time and energy so its attempting to cut it off at the earliest possible moment to reasonably suspect its probably maybe dry. If you want to have food until 2050, you don't need it to be sort kinda dry, you need it to be effing surface of the sun dry
We use it at work as well, since according to some literature freeze drying biomass intended for the extraction of genomic DNA increases the yeild and decreases the shearing of DNA. It also allows for easier homogenisation and breakage of cell walls, which furthers the ammount of DNA extracted.
We also run it for around 48 hours at 0.5 mbar and then for another hour or so at 0.05 mbar final drying pressure, with -50C temperature.
What kind of samples are you testing?
@@skeetsmcgrew3282 I wonder if it could save a bit more power by just not running the vacuum pump continuously. It has pressure gauges, so it could run the vacuum pump only when necessary and probably more as a pulse alongside the heaters. As the system dries I'd expect the pressure to also increase less and less with each heater cycle which would be easier to see if the pump wasn't constantly running.
@@alexmcnabb7957 Mostly coastal sediments, but some of our first nations partners are also interested in the clams and fish that they consume as their communities develop infrastructure.
I ate an mre pork chop without rehydrating it when I was a kid. The experience still remains fresh in my mind 40 years later.
Same
The preservation process worked!
When you opened it up, was there a... nice hiss?
talk to your therapist about it
Now imagine being active duty and eating those pieces of shi when you're out on the field
Also from everything I've seen just investing less than $100 in a vacuum sealer can help prevent freezer burn and extend foods freezer life. Between that canning, drying, and fermenting and just buying some already freeze dried stuff you'd maybe want in an emergency seems more realistic. A small solar power system to run a chest freezer probably costs less too and can be sized up to include some other fun things that are useful.
Those vacuum bags really add up though.
@@LUM-kb2rl for the standard type sealer you can just buy a roll of the plastic and make your own bags, it’s very cheap. The vacuum chamber style bags can be bought cheaply if you buy in bulk (by the 1000)
@@LUM-kb2rlif you're worried about that, get rolls. You can cut them to size, seal one end and save about $10-20 per roll as opposed to buying premade bags. Plus in many cases, vacuum bags are reusable a few times as long as you cut close to the seal. I regularly use the vacuum sealer and I have only had to buy new rolls once in the last 6 years.
I use a vacuum sealer to re-close chip bags, frozen food bags, hotdog packs, you can reseal almost any commercial prepared food bag.
@@burtenplays Good vacuum sealers aren't cheap either. The small home units can and will suck liquids and fail at the seal and fall apart with heavy use and the professional units that don't have those issues can cost hundreds of dollars. Granted, it's not freeze dryer expensive but an 80lb vacuum sealer that's 1800w at peak that also costs 700 bucks is still an investment and time sink. You ever processed 180lbs of meat with a 50 dollar vacuum sealer? Yeah, don't.
Freeze dry fruit put thru a food processor (fruit dust) is amazing. Especially raspberries. Great for desserts and decorating.
I have some experience with larger and bench top pharmaceutical lyophilizers. The end of drying cycle is triggered by increase in the product temperature. This happens when there is no water to evaporate in the product being dried and the heat being supplied to product is no longer being used for evaporating the water, since is all gone, and the products starts heating. This spike in the tray temperature is picked by the sensors on the tray ( as you showed on one of the trays) and used to take the cycle to the next stage. In commercial units; this sensor may sit in one of the product container or on tray for accurate measurement.
So in the unit you showed the decision is made on the basis on the sensor on one of the trays ( and the state of drying of the food on that tray). It also means that having different food type in one lot may not be a good idea, as you have experienced.
Enjoyed the video!!
Dude, for reconstituting you need to look to the astronauts for what they do.
Most importantly you want to weigh the ingredients before and after so you know how much water is missing. Eyeballing it absolutely will lead to very dry or very moist.
And then it's basically directly add warm water, warm not directly boiling and let it sit for a bit. Preferably sealed with the moisture against it directly.
Though the thought of you waving a slice of freeze dried ham in front of a mister is incredible and worth subscribing to the other channel for.
I wonder how a pressure cooker would be for forcing the moisture in.
Or just look at any and all modern freeze dried backpacking meals.
@@chaos.corner If nothing else, I bet freeze dried items that would go into a soup or stew would cook up fine even if they weren't good raw.
I bet something like the powdered milk would work great in baked goods or similar where you just add the needed water with the wet ingredients and the milk with the dry.
@@LanceThumping Yes. Someone else said the dried fruits were great in home-made icecream. Though I got some that were packaged and they were pretty good just as snacks.
You should also look at astronauts as pretty much the only people for which this makes sense. Not because of the long shelf life, but because of the weight.
This way they can transport loads of food up there and recycle water and rehydrate the food.
If all you want is to preserve some stuff and the weight is not really a problem, then plain old freezing is a better option. Especially if you do add some packaging to PREVENT freeze drying.
34:44 This is also why the oranges didn't dry. Citrus is basically a double-protected collection of individually-wrapped juice pellets. The water needs a reasonably porous path out or it will remain trapped where it is.
That’s what I was thinking!
For long term freezing I vacuum seal those items. I vacuum seal butter and freeze. No off tastes or smell when I use the butter!
Freeze drying works pretty well with fresh herbs especially when compared to conventional dehydration-try mint, basil, cilantro parsley, spring onions, etc.
Freeze dried herbs are the highest quality and very expensive.
For small amounts yes. But for large amounts freeze drying is too expensive and time consuming. I can keep basil fresh and green by blanching, vacuum sealing then freezing.
what is the point of drying herbs if you can just store seeds and grow them any time you want?
@@N1withaskillet is it because the method is really good or like with fruits where the cost of the equipment is so high that it only makes sense to freeze dry high quality products?
@@RipliWitanistraight blanchin'
"It's quite sublime." I see what you did there!
Yup, got a laugh in the first 2 seconds. :D
That really set the tone, didn't it?
How is your comment 11 hours old when the video is 4 minutes old?
@@kuolettavaVidsEarly release for “members”.
The first 15 seconds of the video is puns, I'm sold.
Fun fact: Freeze dried onions is what goes onto the McDonald's Cheeseburgers, Hamburgers and Big Mac. (Most other burgers like the quarter pounder and similar use fresh, chopped onions) We had these big bags of freeze dried onions and would just dump them into a big bowl of water to soak. After that you just scoop them out with a big sieve.
So basically you freeze dried some freeze dried onions when you freeze dried your cheeseburger.
Can confirm as someone who's currently working at a mcdonalds. The bowls, atleast the ones here are more so cylindrical and tall container with their own sieve you can lift out and a lid. You let them sit in the fridge soaking for an hour at the minimum.
Why is that exactly; just supply chain ended up being that way? I guess onions don't stay fresh after being cut?
REfreezedried. Nice.
You know I think those actually contribute positively to mcdonald's burger flavor. Fresh onions aren't quite the same as rehydrated-in-condiments dried onions.
@@Joel_Inosin onions _really_ don't stay fresh after being cut
as I found out when I tried premaking all my work lunches for the week. By thursday, the onions started tasting bad.
then the price of lunchmeat skyrocketed and I just started eating chicken patties on buns.
Oh no
I'm not shocked by the price, I'm shocked by a machine for that price looking like a DIY repurposed clothes dryer.
Conclusion: with $3000, you could buy a lot of freeze-dried eggs and instant coffee.
But $3000 doesn’t buy you all that much hash. At least not enough for me! 😆
I was a freeze dryer operator for a few years at a pharmaceutical. Industrial Freeze dryers are so massive, it’s fun to see a miniature version of what i was operating. Our cycle was 3 days long and slowly ramped up the shelf(tray temp in this case) temperature mid cycle to make sure the medication would maintain its integrity. Lyophilization is such a cool process.
3 days is crazy
dope profile pic.
@@Justlookitupplease likewise 👍
@@sarcofaygo6218
That is why it is only used for really valuable things.
U can't do it fast without destroying the properties of the thing u want to preserve.
I appreciate the heck out of this video. I have been served as advertised. I no longer feel like I have to buy a freeze dryer to find out if I would like it. My thing is I just *REALLY* like freeze dried apples. I get tired of buying the bags of them in grocery stores though since they are a little pricey. Now I know that I would much rather continue to pay that price then to pursue the full-time job it would be to make my own. Thanks man!
I mean, you could buy a machine, and calculating the cost and time investment, I'm sure you could break even with packages in just 20 short years.
@kyx5631 the grind begins
I bet if you try really hard you’ll make it in 15 years :)
@@kyx5631with the prices of apples these days? That shits ridiculous
Freeze Dryer can be split into 2 operations. Like a Washer Dryer does.
Freeze first, then get a Vacuum chamber for dying, you could find some basic metal racks. As on his previous videos, splitting the cycles is more efficient for volume and energy.
You can Freeze dry at home, we al have freezers, we only need the Vacuum unit.
Making powered milk sounds really good.
This is very similar to how MBE (Molecular Beam Epitaxy) chambers work. The vacuum lowers the pressure below the vapor pressure of the water, and the heating elements raise the vapor pressure of the water to make it evaporate faster. Pumping itself does not have to be a “mechanical” process. It could be chemical, thermal, electrical as well. In this situation, the walls of the chamber act like the cryo pumps and cryo panels in MBE chambers. They work by lowering the temperature of whatever hits them so far that that the molecules/atoms can’t re-evaporate. Cryopumps are some of the fastest pumps that exist and have an insane capacity. They are also one the primary reasons that an MBE chamber can be brought to 5e-11 Torr or roughly one ten-trillionth of atmospheric pressure.
Also, many oils will largely disappear.
To reconstitute the milk, make a thick mud first, then thin in out. It will take much less effort. Also do this when making chocolate milk or hot chocolate. You will thank me if you try it. ;)
Used this method years ago to mix KMR from powder, you can't give an infant kitten formula with lumps!
I was shocked he was trying to reconstitute the milk and coffee in such a terrible manner, practically asking for it to be a bad experience.
shhhh, you are giving away Chef Secrets!
I always do this way. Furthermore, one should pour liquid onto powder and not the other way around.
Yeah, it's pretty standard to make a slurry first when trying to rehydrate powders that like to clump up, like cornstarch.
21:25 @Alec, you are an odd fellow, but I must say... you steam a good ham.
Everybody I know who has one of these (yep, there's more than one) eventually ended up using them for business purposes. They all independently came to the conclusion they'd have to get paid to use it. (They all do pretty well, actually.)
I've noticed freeze dried items are getting common at vendor booths.
The whole time watching my brain kept coming up with things to sell using it lol. Honestly does seem like a good business assuming you figure out what freeze dries best and what people around you actually want. Though "premium" instant coffee sounds like a hands down no brainer for money making lol. One of my first thoughts was trying different sauces in it to see what worked, anything that you could bring back like eggs would be awesome!
Yeah it's a point I'm surprised he didn't make but unless you've got an overwhelming requirement to freeze dry your own food outsourcing the freeze drying is a way better option. Especially if you want survival rations
Speaking of which... anyone want some dog treats? 😆 🤣 I do love my dryer, though.
I see freeze dried candies at a lot of gas stations now, marked up several hundred percent. Seems like not too bad of an idea. I love the freeze dried skittles and am willing to fork out $7-$9 for a bag every once in a while.
For reconstituting powdered milk, add small amounts of warm or hot water to the powder to make a smooth paste, this helps to emulsify the milk fat. Continue adding aquilots of water while stirring or whisking.
"more confused crunching"
"Confusion intensifies"
I died reading the captions it was amazing
TH-camrs' Easter egg captions are a gold mine
I read your comment as “I dried” lol
You and Aging Wheels are my favorite influencers. Because of you guys, I now have this awesome mid-50s, Eastern European, 600cc, two-stroke combination dishwasher-pinball machine-film developer-betamax player.
😂
But does it lower and raise your toast?
@@TheMADTATER Not since the 50's!
@@Beeks81 yikes, there are prescriptions for that you know.
Buying cans of dehydrated water was getting so expensive! This will be perfect now that I can make my own right at home.
Omg makes me realise, we're breathing dehydrated water...
19:00 the reason for this is because you need saliva to be able to taste things. The receptors that pick up taste are actually on the side of the papillae on the tongue and so saliva is needed to bring the food molecules into the grooves in between each papillae. Essentially your saliva is reconstituting the food and is required to do so so you can taste
Ok, a few comments:
I got a slightly smaller version of this same product at Costco for $1600 -- which was the upper limit on what I'd pay. It has four trays that are a bit slimmer, but more than enough for my needs.
Your opening statement about the 'preppers' and the rabbit hole of hell about freeze drying on TH-cam is PRECISELY what I said a few weeks ago to some people. OMFG. You nailed that one.
Things I've found:
- Pineapple - surprisingly good
- Berries - awesome
- lowfat yogurt - OMFG SO BAD I WANNA DIE - and even worse, don't mix with water!
- caramels - BLEW UP SO BIG - but quite interesting
- ice cream - awesomesauce!
the base model was even cheaper before covid. So price aside, as you cant really justify or not justify someone's budget, i wonder if TC would still recommend against anyone from buying one? They weren't much more expensive than many other luxury kitchen appliances.
@@nadca2 Even if it's cheaper, there's still a ton of prep and the cost of storage, time, money, prep, energy bills, sound pollution which might keep everyone up at night.
It's the sort of thing you've got to have a solid use case for. You would most probably regret it if you bought one on impulse to use casually.
The "medium" (smallest they have) is currently $US 2500 from Costco. That's a lot to spend just to DIY freeze-dried marshmallows and strawberries. I'm ***almost*** foolish enough to do it.
I'll take your word for it. Lmao
Re: Freeze Drying Ice Cubes: iirc, James Hoffman did a video on making his own instant coffee with a freeze dryer much like this one, and he was able to use ice cube trays to freeze the coffee in a regular freezer, although he removed the cubes from the trays and smashed them up before loading into the dryer trays.
Also I assume Hoffman didn't have any cream or sugar in his very expensive coffee
Ooh, that's brilliant.
you could also try getting one of those ice trays that make extra small cubes
@@robertlovett5529 that's correct. First thing I thought of when the coffee in this video was tried was "wow, you must use a decent amount of cream and sugar in your coffee, cause Hoffman did the same thing with straight coffee and it came out terrible".
"For physics reasons im not quite sure of" Physicist here! There are two reasons to keep the walls of the freeze dryer frozen. First is a technical limitations of many vacuum pumps, generally speaking vacuum pumps don't respond well to water vapor so we want to keep it out. The second reason is that when you are heating up the solid water it is evaporating at quite a high rate. Even at atmospheric pressure going from solid to liquid is a roughly 700x volume increase. Additionally, at the low pressures required for freeze drying the efficency of vacuum pumps drops dramatically (applied science does an excellent explanation of this in his video on a glass diffusion pump) so they can't pump nearly enough water vapor from the chamber to keep the pressure down. Thanks to the refrigeration cycle it is very easy to make a really cold surface. When the water molecules run into the cold walls they loose energy and end up sticking together, forming ice in the process.
Doesn't ice expand when frozen? Solid to liquid being a volume increase doesn't sound right.
@@JorenMathews They meant solid to gas, not solid to liquid. It's a typo.
Lose not loose.
@@null6634 Yep. Inasmuch as it makes sense, "loose energy" would mean roughly the opposite.
Every time you went on to describe a new set of items you tried i got excited. This video just kept on giving!
To anyone who needs to hear it: Instant coffee is pretty much as good as the coffee it was made from. The original nescafe was a war ration product that used leftover beans that no one else wanted, and most of the lowest price instants today still use crappy coffee. But, there are many brands available in mainstream grocery stores that reconstitute to produce a cup of coffee which is pretty much coffee-house, fresh pressed espresso taste and mothfeel, and it breaks down to like $0.10 a cup. Medallio Doro, Cafe Bustelo, and surprisingly even the Starbucks Premium instant are all very, very good. And if you like espresso drinks, like lates, instant espresso is a great way to make those at home by microwaving a mug of milk, adding your instant coffee, and then mixing/frothing with a $10 handheld milk frother. No scullded milk mess, no espresso machine.
I knew my palette wasn't that bad! My coffee snob friends wouldn't countenance the idea
And do not sleep on Korean and Japanese instant coffee.
When I had to fly a lot of budget airlines in the very early morning I literally lived and figuratively died on keeping good instant coffee in my bag. Maxim Kanu (single origins) and Maxim White Gold (Xylitol sweetened) are my go to.
If you can do a little fancier than instant there are really nice sachet bags and pop out pour overs. The sachets are more airplane friendly since the logistics are the same as making tea. The pop out pour overs are more for surviving the miserable office coffee and your hotel.
@@m_cabral i've had those and i feel like i'm reading the ramblings of insane people. No, they do not taste anything as nice as a fresh coffee. I'm glad you like them but you're either lying or have entirely shot tastebuds. Same as when i hear people ramble about japanese canned coffee, christ.
@@rasurin I didn’t say it was the same as an anaerobic estate small batch Rwandan light roast or even a nice “boring” blend of fresh coffee from a quality brand.
I’m saying it’s blowing away Folders crystals and the burnt rubber they serve in the locations I mentioned.
That is a *very* different litmus test.
@@rasurin I love _some_ of the Japanese canned coffee, but for different reasons than I like good, fresh coffee. It's like enjoying Chef Boyardee but nowhere in your brain connecting it to real red sauce pasta.
That said, Japanese canned coffee is still better than every American canned coffee I've tried when I was desperate for something caffeinated and coffee-ish. At least the Japanese stuff tastes like "coffee milk". The American ones all taste like they were brewed in an ashtray. WHY!?
A lot of people have mentioned backpacking but the other use I've seen for these is homesteading. If you're doing it right you're going to have way too many eggs, vegetables, fruit, herbs, etc. half the year and very little or none the other half of the year. If you're on solar you're also going to have way more available power at the exact same time. Put the two together and you can freeze-dry all that extra food. Most of the people I've seen doing it just powder all their extra veggies and herbs and use them in soups and stews and baking; reconstituted eggs work just like regular eggs for cooking and baking.
Exactly why we got one
If all you need is to preserve something for less than a year, there are other, much more effective, much cheaper means,
Okay this is literally just the peasant farm cycle, but with modern tech. I love it.
I spent part of my childhood in North Idaho so I get where the "homesteading" and "prep-er" crowd are coming from.
Idk something about paying a company $3000 for a machine doesn't scream "self-sufficient" to me.
@@sadslavboy well we aren’t trying to be shut ins, we have the ability to be fully off grid but there’s no reason to at this point. Also the cost of an item doesn’t make it less “self sufficient”, tractors are expensive as hell and they can help set you up to be way more sustainable.
So, the Scoville scale was originally based on _dilution_ until it was no longer detectable. Gas chromatography has since taken over, but the scale still reflects the original “100% is 16 million” scaling as a unit. So, by removing water from the jalapeño, you’re increasing the percentage of the substance that is capsaicin, and decreasing the percentage that is not. Thus, the result really should be higher on the Scoville scale.
This is great info, thank you! love it.
Does this mean you can create homeopathic hot sauce if you put a Carolina reaper pepper into enough water to dilute it? 🤪
This is why dried Peppers have different names. Jalapeño is Chipotle
@@SimuLord You can create homeopathic anything if you want. But then you shouldn't consume any water ever, as there might've once been a single particle of something nasty in it which will cause your instant death.
Plus, capsaicin bonds better to oils than water, so removing the water from the jalapeños give more contact area to the oils on your skin or whatever food you’re putting them on. Super concentrated little jalapeño burst, given even more power to strongly bind to oils in foods! It sounds pretty good tbh.
I think I can try to explain the inconsistency of the timer.
In an unrelated industry, semiconductor, I used to work in assembly of the FAB machines. One of our tests for the seals was to use a very powerful vacuum machine, effectively turning whatever portion on the interior assembly/subassembly you're handling into a vacuum chamber. The vacuum machine also had it's own mass spectrometer in-line with the vacuum-exhaust. We would test the seals with a small jet of He3 which notoriously is able to get through any seal. The on-board spectrometer was calibrated to detecting Helium, however the same unit could also be calibtrated for Hydrogen, Copper, Oxygen, Nitrogen, and H20.
A lot of your failed attempts are of foods that effectively have their own sealed "skins", like the grapes, and what I think is happening, just like how we would detect an unsatisfactory seal with a sharp uptick on the spectrometer read-out, something similar is happening when vapor suddenly escapes without consistency from whatever food is being processed.
Though I have no idea if even freeze-dryers are equipped with mass spectroscopy instrumentation, it sure would explain the exorbitant price. Yes I know vacuum chambers are not cheap on their own, but spectrometers are even more-so ridiculously expensive.
Astronaut ice cream is the perfect gift shop food because that’s pretty much exactly how much and how often you want to eat astronaut ice cream.
And it never went to space and so no astronaut ever ate those in space. But i loved them as a kid.
I actually like freeze dried ice cream sandwiches more than regular ice cream sandwiches. I did just remember I have 3 in my desk so I should eat one now
Gift shops always make me feel so depressed and hopeless. They have this magical ability of immediately negating 90% of the prior enjoyment of whatever otherwise fun and/or interesting exhibit I just paid (probably quite a lot of) money to visit.
The major use case you’re missing: hikers. It doesn’t matter that the food tastes bad while dehydrated- the idea is to make shelf-stable food you can rehydrate on the trail for FAR cheaper than the commercially available hiking meals. It doesn’t make sense for casual campers, but for people who do months-long thru-hikes or bundle up their whole family for long camping trips, it would pay for itself over time.
This is kinda why I was considering this. I'm not backpacking yet, but over the last couple years I've been slowly building up a backpacking kit. These machines hold some promise for that, but the price tag is a bit too much. Maybe if they drop down to under $1k I could consider it, but for now, I just like musing on the potential.
@1WolfFan my family has had a freeze drier for a long time (not from this company and a completely different design. Most notablyin the door being a dome held in place by a bar with center compression point that solves the issue he was having with the hinges & latch) and we used it to make stuff for taking on extended hiking and camping trips. Mind you there plenty of things it's not a good option for but for the things it works well for you can reduce the volume and weight considerably making it well worth the investment for the extra supplies you can carry.
I backpack and make all my own food, and I use a normal dehydrator. I'm sure that a normal dehydrator will be more versatile than the freeze dryer. And drying then rehydrating meals is incredibly easy
@@1WolfFanJust get a normal dehydrator. I make all my backpacking meals by just making food and putting it in a cheap dehydrator
It still takes some hiking time to pay for itself, it costs about as much as a couple of hundred meals and the ingredients do still cost money. That said I have a friend who does geological mapping for a living and then goes hiking for fun on his days off. He says it payed for it’s self in 6 months and he charges friends and co-workers to run their own trays in it
We've had a freeze dryer on our list for almost 5 years but you're right, awfully pricey.
Surely he just saved you 3 grand?
@@PKWeaver74 Exactly!
@@GetOffMyyLawn He has it 'on the list'. He hasn't bought it yet.
@ nah, we're well aware of the pros and cons. Just a lot of cheaper/more practical items on the list first.
I guess the question is... Have you bought more than 3 grand worth of freeze dried food before?
Do you plan on doing it again?
OK, Supernintendo Chalmers. You've earned my subscription.
I dunno if anyone's mentioned it but thank you for all the work on the captions! It's so nice having reliable captions for what is actually being said on screen and the little extras tucked into them are a treat. As always, great video, and thank you for all you do for the captions
this would be amazing for creative bakers, because you can freeze dry foods, pulse them into a powder then put them in frosting, cakes, meringues etc.
pizza flavored pizza! with a splash of pizza powder.
maybe pizza cola could also be a thing too (the horror)
That's genius. Kind of like essential oils, but the exact opposite method of achieving a concentrated flavor.
This was my thought as well. Gastro-engineers would love this thing for making flavored powders. I bet it's fantastic for things like alcoholic drink flavorings. Or frostings like you mentioned.
I think the critical thing is that you really need to understand the chemistry of what you're doing to make this work. For example, freeze dried potato powder could probably be reconstituted and pressed into fry shapes before deep frying into french fries.
Meats and breading should probably be separated and reconstituted independently, then combined to make the final "nugget"-like product.
All of which is fascinating if you're planning to work with SpaceX on the loadout for their Mars supply ships in a year or two.
As a "fun" cooking method though? It will probably go about as well as your average person trying to use a dryer to make banana chips. Won't work nearly as well as they expect and they'll hate it almost immediately. Sort of like TC! .😂
😮
Wait... strawberry frosting with freeze dried strawberries inside? Yum
1:03 Just bought one on your recommendation, thanks!
Totally. Anytime an influencer says, "this is something you cannot live without." Sign me up.
Omigosh ! What a lost opportunity for an affiliate link !
I bought 3, just to make sure its worth
@@bazooka712 Plus they make a great stocking stuffer.
I want one now, too!😊
I didn't know there were folks going beyond canning, canned goods, & MREs, though my take away is that no one really needs to go beyond those & that a chest freezer is probably good enough for anything that can't reasonably be canned & or found in an MRE
As a gardener of mostly super hot peppers, I love my freeze dryer. If you want to analyze what your freeze dryer is doing, just plug in a usb drive. It will download csv files containing time, pressure, and temperature data. Also if you don't want ice and moisture build up during freezing just close the vacuum valve during the initial cool down.
Look to backpacking meals for inspiration. Smaller pieces of things like meat (also makes freeze drying faster) rehydrated with a carefully determined but still rough ratio of boiling water to freeze-dried product. Let sit for 5-20 minutes (depending on product density) and enjoy! Boiling water heats and hydrates without any significant further cooking.
Also there's an easy trick to calculating rehydration ratio (at least with traditional dehydrating but don't see why it wouldn't work for FD)-just weigh the food going in and then the dried product, and add about the difference to rehydrate (at least as a starting point to then trial and error from, since dehydration and rehydration aren't precisely symmetric processes)
Also things like pemmican that last decades naturally.
I was thinking the veg you get in those meals is cubed up extremely, extremely, small
Also, I think instead of trying to preserve individual ingredients, preserve full dishes. Like, make a soup, stew, or cassarole-like dish out of finely cut ingredients, and then preserve that instead of trying to freeze dry whatever individual components.
@ this is a good idea for sure
Regarding the oranges: you really should've sliced them instead of peeling and separating the segments. The membrane just prevented the moisture from escaping.
@@randomuser-xc2wr Odd that the lemons and limes did though, as they have more pectin than oranges I believe
@@randomuser-xc2wr I've fully dried orange slices in a dehydrator. Like, crispy-dry.
I'm honestly amazed he didn't think about that...
Thank you so much for this video! I was genuinely thinking about getting one of these at some point, but the more I researched, the more it seemed to be...less than a good idea. The cons started to outweigh the pros, and I'm glad you were able to put together this extremely thorough review.
37:31 You sir are basically guilty of terrorism for this. Flagged the video for hateful content, you could have at least warned us!
Oh boy, I'm looking forward to see what this is about
Oh good grief 😱
To incorporate water in to the milk or coffee, make a thin paste/slurry first. Mix only a few teaspoons of water in to the powder, stir it up, and let it sit for a while. Finally, add the remaining water. This hydrates more of the individual granules allowing them to incorporate in to the final mix more readily. This is how i make hot cocoa, using real chocolate, which doesn't like mixing with water.
It's also how you are supposed to do packets of powdered gelatin/Jell-O, it's called "blooming".
The way I'd put it is that adding too much liquid tends to produce clumps which can then freely flow around your mixing implement, making them hard to break up. In contrast by mixing a small amount of liquid in first, it's easy to break up those clumps and evenly moisten everything.
Assuming three meals a day, and that you can source ingredients for $10 less than you can buy a backpacking meal from REI, and you value your time at $0 an hour, you only need to supply 100 days of backpacking to make back your investment. I value my time, and don’t backpack nearly enough to justify that cost, but it is pretty neat. I’d buy one for 1k in a blink
a valiant attempt at making the math start mathing
To be honest, there isnt much to a freeze dryer.
If, and this is a weight bearing if, you where capable of programming a PID controller OR willing to manually cycle every step it would be around a thousand dollars to get an DIY kit together sourcing out machining that you cannot do yourself etc.
And if your a decent fabricator with access to some scrap fridges you could probably make one for less then $500 much less even depending on what you have around.
I use a commercial version for my farm. I sell them at the farmers market and gain profit from food that would normally be composted or thrown out. Freeze dryers are not for normies
@AnonymousAnarchist2 I DIY'd a setup a couple years back... It was definitely a process and pain in the @ss understanding how it worked with almost no content on freeze drying in a DIY freeze drier... Also, using homemade super coolant was it's own fun bag of safe handling..🤦♂️ They get the price down to 1k and it would definitely be worth it just as a matter of convience and ease of use... great content btw... very thorough and well explained... sublimation is one of the more confusing concepts to process cause it uses temp differential and vacuum pressure to do what dry ice does at room temperature...🤦♂️
Have you included the cost of electricity? This thing is really power hungry.
Fun fact the cold walls "attracting" the vapor is similar to technology used in the deposition of some metals on silicon wafers and other materials. A very high vacuum is needed, but a pump can only get rid of so much air. They lower the temperature of the sides so that the random motion of the gas bumps the remaining atoms into the wall. The cold wall essentially takes all the kinetic energy from the moving particle which causes it to essentially be "removed". I imagine the freeze dryer is similar. The water vapor can't be pulled by the pump so it gets frozen to the wall as it bounces around.
19:22 that mic is really picking up on the crunch audio and giving us the full experience 😁👍🍔
Not the part of the internet I expected to see you on. Good taste tho~
legit the clearest crunch I've heard in a long time, and it makes that burger sound like pure missery
Not surprised to see you here😊
@@nckwntzl I never miss a TV video. Living that Patreon early release life
He has it in his mouth
So... No magic of buying 2 of them?
So glad you got this video out before November. Really was considering one of these and enjoy the long format.
On another note can't wait for your November videos.
Through the magic of going bankrupt...
I was also considering buying one, but then I saw the minimum price of 1,300 someodd dollars and noped out immediately.
only for 'sets of trays'
I hope he does a freeze dried thanksgiving dinner.
I'm upset that I had to scroll to find this comment
You forgot burying earthenware ceramic crocks below the frost line in your backyard. My mother in law used to do that around my aspen trees in order to store her Kimchi. Rest in peace grandma Kim.
I know what kimchi is from MASH.
The monster mash?
@@paisleyprince5280 I love MASH, but that surprises me. Never been to a Korean restaurant?
@@newq They've only made their way into the midwest recently, and still not anywhere near small towns.
Closest many people can get is Chinese takeout. Heartbreaking, really... Korean BBQ goes HARD.
Chuño is a naturally freeze dried potatoe in Bolivia.
0:35 classic Technology Connections, not even a minute in and we have life saving facts
I'm not a prepper but I love their subjects. People overlook learning simple stuff like basic house repairs, farming, gardening and so on
Very much this. I repaired a PVC drain pipe today and people think I’m some sort of savant.
The HVAC company that broke the drain line and refused to fix it offered to, for $900, add a 3/4 PVC to 1/2” barb adapter and tap into the nearby plumbing air vent system. Both the tubing and using the air vent is against residential code in my area.
Why ten minutes of gluing things together is a) An unknown skill and b) not what the AC company just did to resolve the issue they caused… is beyond me. Home repair and prepper TH-cam is great for saving thousands on keeping your home running.
Definitely useful skills in that community if you disregard the doom saying aspect of things. I think it's smart to have emergency supplies like a small gas camping stove, non perishable food on hand even in a functioning country the power does get cut off from time to time, the water may be contaminated or storms hit that may prevent you from going to the store etc and I found some of their food preparation useful for making camping meals.
OK but what about the political radicalism and grifting? I'd pay a lot of money not to be exposed to that. 😂
Thank you for your hard work. You have brought this down from, "Goal" to between "Niche applications" and "Solid maybe".
I really with there were versions of this machine that are around or under $1000.
however, I can think of many niche application for it, and reading the comments is an absolute joy.
"prepping" seem like the worst use case for this machine.
my favorite applications include :
- drying flooded things (like books)
- preparing food for camping trips, trucking or any other job that requires being away from home for long periods
- making interesting dishes and ingredients : drying out spices and herbs, tomatoes, making powdered milk and eggs...
- science stuff (mostly turning solutions into powders)
- making dog snacks from bad meat (like pig ears or other animals you butcher yourself)
- selling the stuff you make with it, so you can benefit the community around you.
I think that you would need the niche applications and/or have several applications in mind, because a single one isn't enough. Especially if you have a neighbor who owns one.
I think it would be cool for several people to own one together in order to maximize the usage and to lower the upfront costs.
You can do a lot of this with a dehydrator, or even your oven, convection oven, air fryer, etc.
I have worked a bit with vacuum chambers and I may have an explanation for the ice build-up.
So once under a certain pressure gasses stop behaving like ever expanding fluids and more like solid balls bouncing on solids.
The condenser traps the water that touches the walls of the chamber as ice.
The vacuum pump could remove the water eventually, but that could take too long; unless another vacuum pump designed for even lower pressures was used, which would yeah, do the job but it would still take some time.
28:00 interesting thing I learned about instant coffee. For the best prep, you should use a little cold water in the cup, stir in the crystals, then add hot water after. And it's WAY better then. Maybe a strategy for the freeze dried coffee.
Someone in the comments mentioned doing that for the reconstituted milk too. Probably for similar reasons.
Funny you mention the scenario of the spouse wanting to get a fancy machine and trying to convince their partner that it's a good idea. This happened to me in early-ish married life when hubbie thought getting a food dehydrater would be a great idea. By that time I was working outside the home and managing 2 young kids, so didn't have the energy to learn something new, and told him so. He bought it anyway, and it sat unused in the basement in its original packaging for at least 25 years. My older daughter rescued it as I was selling the house. She went on a dehydration binge this summer to make her own backpacking meal kits. She now has a couple dozen Mason jars of dried food which will last a while. It seems like a much more energy- and time-efficient way to preserve food, even considering the taste and quality differences.
I had to block off time to watch a 1-hour video, but it was totally worth it! Thanks for your research!
That's such a cute story, thanks for sharing
Cool story. :)
I’m really glad I opted to just use an oven or my toaster over to dehydrate rather than buying one even when I had a good reason to.
I do love when something you thought would be going to waste gets used up or becomes really helpful.
I'm not being judgmental but you didnt consider getting rid of it after 10,15, or even 20 years?
@@aaronwberke that's the definition of being judgmental. Perhaps they had a huge basement and out of sight out of mind
Actually, we have one (we bought a used one), but mostly because we have our own vegetable garden and certain things we like year round. So, we mostly freeze dry onions, garlic and spices.
We only use it a few times a year.
About the freeze dried cheeseburger, throw it into a blender and sprinkle it over your self made potato chips. I'm pretty sure this is close to how Lays do there special flavor varieties.
Surprisingly soup also works well. Actually, most things that you can already buy in a powdered form works great in a freeze dryer. It is just that you now know exactly what is in the powder.
For the same reason we created our own baby food. Not only did we save a lot of money doing this (helps paying off the freeze dryer ;-), we like to know what we feed our children.
It is also a fun activity to do with the children. They love taking out the trays, take the herbs and turn them into powder. But only for a hour or so and than they want to do something complete different.
"we like to know what we feed our children." aluminium
This exact freeze-dryer was put on display at my local farm store the day this was uploaded lol
"You are signing up for hours and hours of work..." Sounds like subscribing to Technology Connections!
😂😂😂
Watching the videos isn't work tho?
@@YannickBobut going into a deep dive after he makes a video is
@@ArmyOfThree1000 you're right :/
@@YannickBo lol have fun on your next 2am TH-cam deep dive on insert “niche topic” here
You’ve never influenced me but you’ve educated and entertained me for hours. Thank you.
When I worked at a non-profit that had a breakfast program, I would have LOVED one of these. We would get PALLETS of near-expiry eggs, milk, and fruit from the food bank, and so much would turn before being able to be used. Being able to preserve them for use even just weeks or months later, it would have saved so much food waste.
From the sound of it, you'd need a room full of them to handle that much food.
@@RobertDeCaireor just a bigger one.
But the question is: which would be more cost-effective, buying the freeze dryer, having a volunteer spend inordinate amounts of time preparing the stuff, then spending the money on electricity to freeze dry the food... or just waste the pallets of food but use the money you would have spent freeze drying to just purchase new food wholesale? I'm guessing it'd probably lean more towards the latter than the former.
@@cmgeorge12 "having a volunteer spend inordinate amounts of time preparing the stuff"
There is not inordinate amount of time needed to freezedry milk.
You simply pour the milk from your container into the trays located in the machine and press start.
Milk is the perfect food for this.
Egg is a close second where all the work is cracking the eggs into the tray and throwing the shell away.
@@PappaTom-ub3ht But there is the 16+ hours of runtime, and the associated energy use.
I'm a backpacker/bikepacker/kayaker, and a freeze-drier would be invaluable for preparing lightweight meals for backcountry adventures. After watching this video, it makes sense that most freeze-dried backpacking meals are pretty wet to begin with so they can be reconstituted effectively with water. Things like chili, pasta, stews, rice dishes, etc. I think it would be interesting/educational to see this tested with more complete home-cooked meals rather than base ingredients.
One thing to bear in mind is that these seem to be a bit of a fad at the moment. If they're as annoying to use as it seems, that means there's likely to be a glut on the used market in the next couple of years. Like treadmills and scuba gear.
And air fryers, don't forget about those. Arguably freeze dryers are destined to be future white goods based eWaste.
That could be fun. If you imagine getting one of these for free off craigslist, then it becomes a much much more tempting idea to play with.
@@garydiamondguitarist Honestly? I got an air fryer basically for free and it get used a lot. It's basically a fast convection oven. Getting much more value out of it than the instant pot.
@@LanceThumping I'm sure ones that just need some simple repairs will be popping up too.
These are used in marijuana concentrate processing. Every time ive seen one in real life have been with growers.
to be fair, home pickiling is fun! and works very well for food preservation.
You can also pickle beets, eggs, cabbage, and so many other things!
And often way cheaper than buying pickles at the store.
@@MonkeyJedi99 I love pickled eggs so much. And pickling them with beets imparts a nice flavor and a beautiful color.
Strawberries work really well because they have low sugar, and nearly all the flavor-including the sweetness-is actually volatile chemicals that you lose when you heat them. So freeze drying concentrates them, and you can add them to other strawberries (preferably macerated) to get double strawberry flavor.
I love your humor, it just tickles me the way you play with words, and your subtle use sarcasm is so fun.