Looks like they now have 3 sizes with the smallest under $3k

We just had a freezer fail and had to quickly cook some meat and refreeze in another freezer.
The wife said "if we had that freezedryer we could have used this meat"

I remember a really long thread on this and my searcg fu must be weak.

still a good unit and worth the money?

do you buy a #10 canner or just put in mylar?

what size unit is the best to get?

thanks

tag


@miglo
@Pangea
@The_Beer_Slayer

I bought one of the first ones when they came out, (they have changed alot since then)
it has worked great, we used it alot for the first few years, i have enough freeze dried food stored
for months now but honestly only use it now for making food for camping trips/road trips in my RV
the rest of the time it sits alot.

I have the large unit because i wanted to be able to make alot of food quicker if you can afford it
i would buy the biggest one you can and also the oilless pump they now have, i just use the mylar bags to store the food,
also get a second set of trays, while your using one set in the dryer you can be prefreezing the next batch with your other set of trays.

The dryer and the company are topnotch IMO they helped me alot when i had questions etc

So to wrap up you'll use it alot in the beginning but you can get burned out after awhile, its a nice tool to have and i dont regret buying it

This ladies channel i like alot for freeze dryer info she also runs a FB group for it https://www.youtube.com/user/InFlorida4252/videos

thanks so much!!! this is the info the wife and I were looking for. thanks again so much!

This is my third year plus of owning a large.  My priorities are high value fresh veggies, freezer dependent foods - veggie and meats.  Lots of green chile in mason jars.  Mason jars are easy to eat out of.  Mylar bags are for longer term storage but mice will run rampant through them.  I store mine in metal 55 gallon drums.  Freeze dried foods are great.  Freezers are not required and as a weak link are eliminated from storage requirements.

has it been a good financial investment? Worth the cost?

How good are meats that are freeze dried?

we have 3 freezers and it scares me

thanks again

Meats are best freeze dried raw IMO, trying to get oily/greasy meat freeze dried is tough.
I have freeze dried many pounds of raw hamburger/chicken etc

I also have chickens so i have freeze dried a lot of eggs a ton actually lol

As far as financially speaking if i would buy from say Mountain House all that i have freeze dried
it would be way more than i spent on the dryer and accessories, every time i go to Sams club i buy bulk
cheese/meat or big cans of veggies and dry them up i have so much green beans/corn etc dried im set for a long time

This is the cart i use to carry my dryer/pump and other drying gear Uline Cart

@dayphotog I like this guys youtube channel and he's debuting his new freeze dryer tonight, thought you might be interested

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBmqwe-q5Z0

thanks will watch now!!

I am looking at buying one right now.  Is it worth the extra $200 for stainless over painted?  Is the painted alum or steel?

Retired at 40 on YouTube did a great cost break down including power usage.

If you're planning on storing a lot of food for a long time, it's worth it. I started off buying a bunch of stuff from the mormon pantry. Most of that is 20+ years stable, and its mostly carbs.
But if you have a bunch of pasta what do you eat with it?
6 pounds of grated cheese turns into 4.5 pounds of freeze dried in 24 hours. That would cost $90-100 to buy the Augason Farms equivalent. Buy the cheese at sams or costco, bulk mylar bags and o2 absorbers, electricity, and I doubt I have $25 in it.
Local grocer has pork butts for $1/pound right now. Those are super easy to salt and pepper, throw on the pellet grill for 6 hours, wrap and toss in the oven to finish. It is some work to shred it, remove as much fat as possible, but then I have enough cheap, tasty, meat to feed the freeze dryer for a couple of days.
Last week was chicken fajita thighs on sale for $1/pound. We wound up with probably 50 pounds of those to run.
We haven't had ours long enough to catch a sale on eggs, or the occasional WalMart deal on milk but when we do we will run a bunch of that. It will be a long time before we get to what we feel is "enough" for us to breathe a bit easier. When we do, we will be able to run stuff for friends for many months and make a nice profit doing it.
You could also recoup selling freeze dried skittles or gummies, ice cream sandwiches, yogurt drops , etc.
There's also the claim that freeze dried keeps 90% of the nutrients versus home canning destroying half.
You also have huge space and weight savings.
I haven't reconstituted anything yet, but I have tried everything we've done. Trying some of this stuff straight out of the machine is hilarious. Meat that feels like expanded foam insulation, but tastes exactly as it should. Cheese, turkey, chicken, corn, mixed veggies, skittles, it all tastes great.

I'm really hesitant to spend $3k on a freeze dryer. I have asked some buddies if they'd like to go in on one together, or maybe I could buy one and mitigate some of my costs by renting it out. However, I haven't had many takers.

If any of you fellow DFW folks wants to go halvsies or time-share, let me know.