Hey Greg, how is the freeze drier working out? Still good I hope. And have you tried eating anything you have done?
So far, great!
We have eaten some meals that were freeze dried (more to test than anything), and it s amazing how close it is to the original. Actually, we had spaghetti tonight (homemade everything, thank you very much),and the onions and mushrooms that went into the sauce we’re freeze dried.
I know you were worried about maintenance. When we got the thing, one place in the manual said to drain and filter the oil from the pump with every use. Another place said to change every 4 or 5 times. Both said to flush the pump every 12 uses or so. Changing the oil was a 5 minute job. Flushing sucked and made a mess. That was my only complaint.
We found a separate vendor that sells an add on that adapts a car oil filter to the unit. I loved the part on their website that said to not tell Harvest Right about it because it’d kill your warranty. We bought the thing. I connected it and it turned a 30 minute pain in my butt to a 5 minute clean job. Their filters have a drain so it’s easy to get water out of the oil, and the oils stays clean with every run.
We bought the freeze dryer on sale, which they have all the time. They also seem to have better sales when the units wouldn’t sell as well due to growing seasons.
The only problem we had was a small oil leak and their support guys sent replacement gaskets 2 day for free, so I didn’t fuss about that. We have probably done close to 75 cycles, maybe more. For a while, it seemed like it was running all the time (with no noticeable change to our utility bill). We did veggies, meats, fruit, sour cream, and about anything you could think of to freeze dry - oh, and meatloaf, spaghetti and I don’t remember what all.
We got the one with 3 trays. I’d get the one with 4 if I did it again.....
Overall we are very happy with it.