Freeze Drying Milk, Again
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- Опубликовано: 5 фев 2025
- Freeze drying a couple more gallons of milk. This time with (hopefully) more information. We had a couple gallons of milk that were going to go past their best-if used-by date while we were gone to the coast, so we frozen the milk in prep for freeze drying upon our return. This is their story. Bum-bum-bum-bum! (hear the Dragnet tune here)
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Before buying a freeze dryer, perhaps research to find out more about the downside of the machine; some people have problems with their machine and it's big and heavy and hard to return!
I'd check Costco first to see if you can get one there. - Best return policy:)
When trying to decide what to freeze dry you can start by asking why.
Start by asking yourself this question. Why are you freeze drying food? Knowing this should help you decide what you should freeze dry first.
I'm freeze drying because:
Just to freeze dry leftovers?
You want to make your own food for camping/backpacking?
For if/when the SHTF?
For a short term emergency?
You have your own garden and want to freeze dry the food?
You love Costco but don't have a family of 6?
You are good at finding the food sales but only have 1 freezer?
When you cook homemade chili just for yourself you make 10 gallons? Because you have 3 full freezers and are worried about power outages?
If I knew then what I know now, I would have freeze dried things in a different order. Or maybe not, because I started freeze drying because we had 3 full freezers, I was thinking of getting another one, and I decided I should buy a walk-in freezer instead. I started looking into walk-ins and realized they were expensive to buy (even used ones) AND expensive to own and operate. Then I found out Harvest Right was making home sized freeze dryers. One of my first thoughts was "I like Mountain House!" I have used their food for backpacking almost 45 years and we even kept some in our travel trailer, for just in case.
Freeze dried food will stay fresh for many years and be ready and waiting when you need it.
We do videos showing how we are using our Harvest Right Freeze Dryer to freeze dry food for long term storage. (We have the medium size machine that we got in August of 2017) We talk about how to load and unload the freeze dryer, how to know if the food is dry, is it better to freeze dry raw food or cooked food, and do a few taste tests. Freeze dried food is also great for prepping or just for camping and snacking!
The cutting board hack is worth the cost of admission! 5 stars! Highly recommend!
Thanks!
Me: "Laziness is the mother of invention"
Love the rolling cart, great idea.
Thanks! You give such good information!
I use a canning funnel for powdered products into the bags.
Yes! Canning funnels work great for this. Thanks!
Is it better to pre-freeze before putting in freeze dried machine?
I've seen lots of folks on RUclips seems to do pre-freeze. So I'm kinda wondering why.
Does it save time and electricity by doing that?
Saves the machine from running for an extra 7ish hours.
Pre-freezing is not required. I doubt it saves electricity; it takes a certain amount of energy to freeze something in either machine.
For me it's mostly about time.
I prefreeze almost everything because: 1) it saves hours of freeze dryer time for each batch, 2) I do have the older, tilted machine which means I can't pour liquids into the trays in the machine, (though I could pre-freeze directly into the freeze dryer trays in the freezer. I would need A LOT of trays) 3) I make very large batches of food when I cook, so I may have 5 freeze dryer loads from a single batch, 4) prefreezing slightly lightens the load of ice in the freeze dryer 5) by prefreezing in the small trays I have pre-measured quantities when I do the final bagging 6) we do have a lot of freezer space available. We have had up to 15+ batches of prefrozen items waiting for the freeze dryer.
@@SchoolReports talking about more trays. Did you know you can get an 8 shelf insert for about $450?
Just a thought. Of course you would have to purchase more trays but its worth looking into.
All shelving inserts are interchangeable between the pharmaceutical versions, (which doubles your shelves in the machine) just make sure they still use the same connector in the back as the new ones.
If you do a lot of liquids it will double your capacity but just remember theres an ice limit to the drum, meaning the ice capacity of your machine will determine the amount of liquid you can actually displace I think.
@@kristoskalemanis Wow! Thanks. That might be interesting for some items, but I can't even fill the 4 trays 100% with liquid items without going over my self imposed water/ice maximum. The way I use the 7 x7 pre-freeze pans, if I were to totally fill the freeze dryer trays, I end up with 20 cups, or about 10 lbs of water/ice. I try to limit each batch to a maximum of 7 or 8 lbs of water/ice.
Could you double the portions/batch on the trays by stacking them on top of each other?
Yes or no. It depends on what the food is. The stacking is not usually a problem, it's the total water load of the batch.
We load the trays with more than one layer for many items. For some items we put a piece of parchment between the layers ( ruclips.net/video/F2351166JZM/видео.htmlsi=tgcladY46lQBlFjZ&t=512 ), most of the time we just have layers with nothing in between. ( ruclips.net/video/-XGk0rSgjbQ/видео.htmlsi=BxdFCn0GpEfeFwYb&t=21 )
The true capacity per load is mostly a function of the ice (water) load of the cold trap. (The chamber wall) With the medium machine it's in the 10 to 12 lb range; I mostly try to load mine to the 8 to 10 lbs of ice range spread evenly :) across all the trays.
@@SchoolReports in this case it looks like there is lots of room for more milk, like double
@@richardallan5460 Yes, we could _physically_ fit them in our machine (the newer 5 tray medium has less space between trays), but again, the limit is about the water weight.
A double layer of full blocks of milk would be nearly 20 lbs of water. Four trays filled with blocks of milk is 10 lbs. (This batch was only 8 lbs because I didn't put in the half blocks like I did in this video - ruclips.net/video/KrBIoDqGhiA/видео.htmlsi=j0wzjOt2MRSZQEzC&t=519)
In an overloaded machine (ice on the chamber walls touching the rack) the process will kind of stall out because the wall ice will start being re-sublimated.
@@SchoolReports so I think about 6 litres would be the limit. Thanks for your responses and all the how-to's
@@richardallan5460 6 would be a very heavy water/ice load. We try to keep ours down below the 4.5 to 5 liter range. (Again, this is for the medium size machine)
How well does it reconstitute?
The milk rehydrates real well. I need to make a new video showing the rehydration of milk, but here are some older samples: Freeze drying more milk, and rehydrating samples ruclips.net/video/DKtCQKHDHxM/видео.html And this one shows a bit of milk rehydrating for a recipe, so it might not be a fair example because I wasn't trying to rehydrate it for drinking so I didn't care if it was all the way mixed. ruclips.net/video/gL_fUza_wfI/видео.html
hey please can you tell me if i can freeze dry heavy cream , if so what will be the shelf life of heavy cream powder
We've only done one small test of heavy cream so I don't know much about it yet. Rehydrating Freeze Dried Heavy Whipping Cream ruclips.net/video/yuswujTkeZU/видео.html
We have an older FD, with 5 trays. We seem to have problems when we load each tray with all raw eggs, or all bone broth. We always pre-freeze. We have had massive blow ups. Should we be limiting the amount of liquid per batch? Instead of an all egg batch, should we limit the eggs to 3 trays and add sliced apples to the other two? Could we be overloading with liquid? We have been afraid to try milk. Love your channel. Thanks for the help!
Blow ups in the freeze dryer while freeze drying milk should not be a thing. The total maximum amount of water content per batch is dependent machine size, as I'm sure you know, but that should have nothing to do with this issue and I'll get back to that later.
My first question is; which firmware version is your machine running? Can you run it in custom mode?
@@SchoolReports Thank you for much for responding. Because of a few blowups ( eggs, broths, etc), which would then seem to stall the machine, Harvest Right has worked with us to fix our machine. They actually have been wonderful. Our old machine was too old to update the firmware. With the new upgrades, we can customize the batches. We don’t know the old version, but we have a new usb board and screen. It feels like we are re-learning the machine. We are just scared to FD anything too wet, like eggs or broths, soups or gravy, sauces. We feel like we need to take a class in freeze drying. Our new info is V5.0.7FB, which means nothing to us. We started going through each of your videos last night for a refresher. Great info!
@@noracharles80 Thanks for your kind words.
We can make this work, but without being able to screen share this may take a while. (comments back and forth) I hope to try doing a live-stream in the future to be able to share screens and videos in real-time.
Is this the new version you have? harvestright.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Owners-Manual-v072021-REV1-DIGITAL.pdf
If this is the one you have, the problem starts at page 9, number 6, where the machine thinks that the food "is cold enough." It is NOT cold enough! Some foods MUST be very, very cold before the vacuum and drying starts or they will foam up.
We (you and I) CAN make it work!
We have the medium size machine and we try to limit the water weight to 8 lbs. (we have pushed it to over 11lbs, but it does add a lot of time)
For the large machine, which I assume is what you have, I would limit the water weigh to about 10 to 12 lbs. (That would be about 5 quarts of very liquid soup)
@@noracharles80 I should have mentioned that, while you could be overloading the machine with liquid, it should not result in blow ups of any kind. That's a separate issue.
What size oxygen absorbers do you put in the bags and how long will these store. Also, how much water do you add to each package of milk to bring it back to liquid?
We use 300cc Oxygen absorbers in these bags. We have only had our Harvest Right 4 1/2 years, so we only know from experience that it lasts more than 4 1/2 years. The commercial freeze dry food companies say it can last up to 20 or 30 years.
For the 1 quart we just put the milk powder in a container then fill it to the 1 quart mark.
Thanks. I like your ideas. I want to try that with soy/almond milk and see how that does. Have you tried that yourself?
The thought had never crossed my mind! Now I'll HAVE to try it.
I did almond milk and it does work but bringing it back takes time. There is a lot of ice build up too so I did only about 1 1/2 cups per tray.
Where can I get my hands on one of those clear circle inserts?
It's just a tight fitting disc I cut out of Acrylic. (I used 0.075" thick acrylic (1.9mm thick) I would probably use 1/8" (3mm +) next time) The disc seems to work better than the pad that came with the freeze dryer for lowering heat transfer. I'm basing this on the fact that the front of the door does not get as cold with the plastic disc in place as it did with pad. (think airplane window) I love how good of a job it has done and have not experienced any downside. Here is how I made it. Making an Acrylic Disc Front for a Harvest Right Freeze Dryer ruclips.net/video/erH1VDqNi80/видео.html
@@SchoolReports you're amazing, thank you so much!
Where are you buying your bags?
We've been getting our bags here - packfreshusa.com/shop/seal-top-gusset-mylar-bags-sets/ We us mostly the (#1) quart (#2) pint and (#3) 2 quart bags.
Wait the new machines self level?
With the newer machines the freeze dry chamber is sloped to the drain inside the machine but the frame/body of the machine stays level with the table it's setting on. The rack for the trays inside the chamber is built with the opposite slope of the chamber, thereby keeping the trays level. (I hope I'm saying this in a way that makes sense) What's easy to draw as a sketch is hard for me to put in words.
@@SchoolReports I see.
TY for the making that clear.
So I still should manually level it.
I have a newer one and was wondering if I should level it. Makes sense now that I should have.
@Catwood Cooking True. I just assumed the counter/table/work bench would be level. You do need to check to make sure it IS level.
Hi, how long is the shelf life of the FD milk?
I don't know from experience. We've only had ours 4+ years, but it's supposed to be good for 20+ years, assuming proper storage.
@@SchoolReports that's amazing, thank you!
Ahh,,,powdered milk. How long did the process take?
I don't know for that batch because I almost never tracked the time on past batches.
I am tracking the data on the current series and did a batch of milk for batch 522 (batch 22 of the series) ruclips.net/video/KrBIoDqGhiA/видео.html and here are the stats:
Cost of the milk: $4.38 for 10 lbs
Total batch time: 45 hours 8 minutes
Weight before drying: 10 lbs, Weight after drying: 506 grams (about 1.1 lbs)
Power use: 31.43 kWh
Bagged into: 5 quart 7 mil Mylar bags with 300cc oxygen absorbers.
I was intrigued with the process of of how you freeze the milk in pans, then inserting and using a thermometer, and then crushing the milk in a plastic bag. It was well done! What temperature minimum were you looking for to tell you the process was done?
I looking to make sure it gets up to the temperature that the trays are set at, for at least a couple hours. I had the tray temp set for 110f for the milk. The bottom tray had been over 110f until the tray heaters turn off during the last 15 minutes of the final dry cycle.
I saw your question over on the video about the seal, but it disappeared. I hope that means that you were able to find the info about getting a seal; I had to call Harvest Right, they didn't have it on their website.
@@SchoolReports Thank you for replying to my message. I do not see any seals anywhere. I will call HR and ask them directly since I really would like to have a backup.
@@SchoolReportswas it the temperature of tray or milk , because milk at 110 f should be in liquid state right , i just don't get could you please explain it to me ?
@@anwarsharif7853 The trays and all the contents end up whatever temperature was set. (in this case 110 f) Most of the time I set it set for 125 f.
The water in the food never becomes liquid during freeze drying. The freeze chamber is cooled to lower than -40 F. Then, a very strong vacuum is pulled. Under these conditions, as the food is slowly heated, the water in the food doesn't melt, it sublimates. (like the way dry ice "melts") It goes directly from solid ice to a gas without becoming a liquid. And then the process reverses and the water goes directly from a gas to a solid (desublimation or deposition) and is deposited on the super cold chamber walls.
Freeze Drying Water - Short Version ruclips.net/video/BZRnR-AvbnY/видео.html
What number do you have the Sealer set on for those 7Mil bags?
On our sealer it's on 7. (out of 8)
In my experience, lower fat milk with less sugar works best. The time I tried a brand name whole milk, it was a disaster. It looked like blown cotton candy in the freeze dryer. Because of the high humidity here in the South, the dried milk does reconstitute quickly if left out. It could be that is wasn't completely dry, although the trays felt dry. It was a huge mess😳
The second go around went perfect. Lower fat/sugar as well as pre freezing did the trick.
I have not had a problem with milk of any kind. I've done chocolate milk, 2%, whole milk, and even heavy cream.
Do you have a newer machine? All of the people I've heard from that have had a problem with milk or ice cream have had a newer machine. There is a work around solution to this problem (check pinned comment from Neil Feit ruclips.net/video/gAL0BUmdtvg/видео.html) and there may be a software update to allow for extra freeze time. (check pinned comment from Baneironhand ruclips.net/video/wq7Xz8xfPsY/видео.html)
With my machine I use the custom cycle to make sure the milk is VERY cold before starting the vacuum drying process, at least -40f.
I also have only ever had bubbling when the milk was not thoroughly frozen when the pump turned on. Prefreezing has solved all of those problems for me. Whole milk, cream, chocolate milk, eggnog, etc all dry well so long as they are frozen.
Why pre freeze for 2 weeks? What the heck? Sounds crazy for time!
They were NOT in the freezer for 2 week to prefreeze, they were just in the freezer for weeks while awaiting their turn in the freeze dryer. Sometimes it takes a while to get around to an item that's waiting in the freezer, sometimes weeks, months, or even a year plus!
I prefreeze things in the other pans because: 1) it saves freeze dryer time, 2) I have the older, tilted machine which means I can't pour liquids into the trays in the machine, 3) I make very large batches of food when I cook so I may have 2 or 3 freeze dryer loads (or more) from a single batch, 4) prefreezing slightly lightens the load of ice in the freeze dryer 5) by prefreezing in the small, 2 cup pans (about 1 lb), I have pre measured quantities when I do the final bagging 6) we have a lot of freezer space available.
We have had up to 15+ batches of prefrozen items waiting for the freeze dryer.
Can u also FD buttermilk & whole milk not 2% ? Your subscriber
Yes. We have done whole milk, 2%, 1%, chocolate milk, and buttermilk.
Here is a test of a couple samples - ruclips.net/video/DKtCQKHDHxM/видео.htmlsi=dbIDB2inH31mxqCo&t=1226
@@SchoolReports I want to thank you so much for taking the time to answer my questions. That means so much to us your subscribers. That shows you care about us & we really appreciate it. God bless you & your family.
Waste of bags. Just reseal and use it up
Sorry, I have no idea what that means.
@@SchoolReports I live on limited funds and can not afford to use up so many bags. The big bag and just take what I need until it’s all gone
@@sheilarogers3448 That makes absolute, perfect sense!
If I were planning on using that item near future, like pantry stock items, I agree with you, that's a great way to use them. Maybe even use jars with a jar vacuum sealer for the constant use things.