How much does it cost to freeze dry Apple Slices, Yogurt, and Apple Sauce in the 4-tray Harvest Right dryer?
About $0.49 of power costs per pound.
This freeze dryer log was submitted to us from someone else (submit your freeze dryer log with an image, and we’ll get it added too – it will help others better understand everything that goes into freeze drying at home). The power costs are adjusted to their local power rates ($0.1218 vs the normal $0.10 average that we normally use). Your power rate will likely be different, so it’s important to understand your power bill.
Download the PDF of the power cost analysis: Apple Slices, Yogurt, and Apple Sauce – 4-tray
2 thoughts on “Apple Slices, Yogurt, and Apple Sauce [4-tray]”
How do you do a short cycle?
Nila Hodgson
The freeze dryer software automatically detects lighter loads, which will trigger a short cycle.
Apart from letting the machine do its thing (which it does quite well), you can pre-freeze your food the day or more before. Then start a custom cycle, decrease the default freeze time by a couple hours, wait until the unit gets below freezing, then put your pre-frozen food in the unit. Pre-freezing your food not only reduces the needed freeze time in the freeze dryer, but it also makes it much easier to deal with liquid foods.
You can also skip the defrost cycle and put some simple fans in front of the unit. Then manually pull the ice out once it releases from the cylinder. However, you don’t save much energy by skipping the defrost cycle (as you can see from most of the cost analyses).
Harvest Right did recently release a new unit design, which also reduces the dry time.
Nathan