- SurvivalBlog.com - https://survivalblog.com -

Harvest Right: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly – Part 1, by HJL

Intro

Three years ago I reviewed Harvest Right’s Freeze Dryer (Part 1 [1], Part 2 [2], and Part 3 [3]). Since then, Harvest Righ [4]t has updated their freeze dryer with many improvements and new features. SurvivalBlog felt is was time to re-visit this subject and update the review based upon these new and improved features. We’ll also include many of the operating tips that we have learned along the way. We’ve been running the new model of the freeze dryer (FD) for almost a year now, right along side the old model. It made the comparison very easy on the new features.

The Good

Harvest Right has obviously been responsive to their user base. They’ve listened to the issues, made improvements that the users have suggested, and incorporated many of their customer’s suggestions into the redesigned FD. The original model that we reviewed had a matte black finish and looked like an industrial machine. While it sat on my kitchen counter for most of a year while we profiled it, it was ugly. It also stood out like a sore thumb with every guest to our house immediately attracted to it.

The new model has come along ways towards the professional fit and finish of the FD. This model was in stainless steel, and their improvements were quite noticeable. While still the same basic size and shape, the clear door now featured nice rounded edges, which contribute to an overall friendlier feel of the machine. The drain no longer sneaks out between the counter top and side panels getting squished in the process. Instead, the drain extension as a nifty cutout that makes it much cleaner. My preference would have been to have the drain mounted in the lower back corner of the machine, as the current one is just loosely laying there. However, the cutout is an okay compromise.

The Controller Interface

The controller on the old FD was certainly a weakness. Its monochrome blue LCD was difficult to read and had a significant flicker to it. It was also combined with two control knobs sticking out of the side of the machine. While I’ve been careful with mine, it didn’t take much investigation to know that this was a weak point in the design. As heavy as the machine is, these fragile knobs would be a break point.

The new models use a touch screen LCD instead. The bright contrasting colors make it easier to read, and there is no worry about snapping knobs off. I did notice that there were times when the response of the LCD touch seemed sluggish, often causing me to repeat touch commands, but it’s easy to recover. This new controller is definitely easier to use. As a bonus, as long as the machine doesn’t lose power in the middle of a cycle, it remembers what you were doing. If you have to short cycle it because you set something wrong, it will remember where it was supposed to be.

One of the issues in the older model is that there was much less control over the food tray heaters, and they tended to raise the temperature of the food to well over 100 degrees by the time the cycle was finished. The new controller seems to regulate this temperature much better, so the food never gets to the point where nutrients are being destroyed due to temperature.

Programmability

There is some limited programmability available through the front panel. The old unit had the dials on the side that you had to set with every batch. This new unit is programmed through the touch panel and it will remember these settings as long as it doesn’t lose power. We’ve noticed that a batch of eggs (eight dozen large eggs at a time) or a gallon of milk requires a longer freeze time than the unit’s default settings. Sometimes food can fool the unit by seeming to be done when it’s not.

If you know this in advance (because the last batch required more drying time), you can simply program the extra time at the beginning of the run. This works well, because we tend to run several batches of the same foods serially. It’s nice not having to reprogram the unit when you know it requires the same parameters as the last run.

Upgradability

There is a USB port built into the control board that is accessible on the side of the machine. Upgrades to the machine are possible using this port. This ensures that your machine can always have the latest software utilizing the best control algorithms to produce the best product.

Remembers Where You Left Off

Every once in a while we have a major “oops”. We discover the breaker has flipped because we had too much plugged into it. I have also mistakenly shut the unit off by pressing the control buttons too much too often. Then there are the times when you get the unit started and it can’t finish because something has gone wrong and you have to start over. Now what? The majority of these “oops” have been due to human error. Yet, as long as the unit hasn’t lost power, it remembers that it got short cycled and can generally pick right back up where it left off.

Occasionally, it knows that something went wrong and it can’t figure out where it should be, but it’s smart enough to figure out that a full cycle doesn’t need to be performed in order to finish. If this is the case, it will start counting cycles and knock off time as it realizes that there isn’t as much moisture in the food as it originally thought.

Larger Vacuum Hose

The unit I recently tested had a much larger vacuum hose connecting the vacuum chamber to the vacuum pump. This has both good and bad connotations though. We’ll talk about the bad in the next section, but the good part is that the larger hose allows the unit to finish the batches faster. I noticed about a 20% improvement in finishing times compared to the old model. There are many other changes to the unit though, so it’s difficult to know if this improvement is due solely to the larger vacuum hose or if it has any effect at all. For now, I’m assuming that it does.

Cleaning

Last time, I tested the bottom-of-the-line no-frills black unit. This time, I tested the stainless steel unit. The stainless is a sweet option. Just like every other stainless steel appliance, it does show fingerprints, but it is easily wiped down and cleaned. If you have a particularly messy batch of food that gets run through it, you can simply wipe it out with a wet rag.

If you spilled oil, a hot soapy rag makes cleanup a breeze. It is still difficult to clean the vacuum line port and drain port, but you only do that once before you figure out never to try that food again. (Reference the “butter [2]” story in the original article.) The simple exterior makes it easy to clean by simply wiping it down with a wet rag. Because we live in a dusty environment, we do have to remove the side vent panels and vacuum the inside out about once every two months though.

Solid Engineering, Good Construction

This is close to industrial quality in its build. Except for the control panel, it is simple, sturdy, and reliable. The unit is not sturdy enough to survive a drop off the counter very well, but it’s heavy enough that you are not likely to push it around much. It stays put when you set it up and doesn’t move around as you work with it, opening the door or loading/unloading trays.

Less Annoying Announcement Beep

One of the most annoying features of the original machine was the piezoelectric buzzer that sounded when the unit had finished its cycle. While it was loud and could easily notify you when the unit was in the garage, while you were in the kitchen it had its drawbacks. The finish time of the machine never seems to coincide to a convenient time for me. While the machine would hold the food in a frozen, dried state upon finishing the process, that buzzer would sound every few minutes. That’s fine when it’s two o’clock in the afternoon, but two in the morning was quite annoying. You couldn’t ignore it either, because it was too loud and drove the dogs crazy.

We eventually resorted to checking the finish time right before bed and extending the time so the buzzer would go off after we arose in the morning. The new machine has a much more palatable chime when it finishes. I have been able to sleep through it, though the dog can’t. Of course, on the flip side, you may not hear it until you are in the vicinity of the unit. But since the unit holds the food in a frozen state, it’s generally okay.

The Bad

There are some annoying things with the freeze dryer. None of them are show stoppers, but if you are not prepared for it, you will get frustrated.

Defrosting – Water Leaking Out The Front

When the unit is running, the water drawn out of the food is re-frozen around the sides of the vacuum chamber. After each run, it must go through a defrost cycle to allow the water to melt off. However, as the ice melts, it tends to slide to the bottom and in an occasional extreme case the drain can get plugged. Because it is ice, it is self resolving. But without the vacuum drawing the door closed, the seal is insufficient to keep the backed up water from leaking out the front. On about 90% of the defrost cycles, there is a tiny dribble of water that runs down the front of the unit. On one or two batches a month, there is significant water that escapes until the drain clears up.

Harvest Right’s fix is to place a significant tilt in the unit so that water runs more naturally towards the back of the unit to drain. The more tilt you have, the more likely the drain clears itself before water runs out the front. You can significantly reduce leaking by following that advice. However, you also severely limit how much liquid you can place in the trays. To tilt it enough to drop the leak rate to less than 99% you nearly halve the volume of liquid food the unit is capable of. Each tray can normally hold a full quart of liquid, but raising the front of the unit one inch means that each tray will only hold a pint. Solid foods are not an issue, but milk and eggs are.

Our fix has been to keep a towel laid down under the opening during the defrost cycle or during loading liquid foods. It’s easy, cheap insurance against water damage and makes for an easy cleanup.

Vacuum Pump

The pump is not purpose designed as a food dehydration vacuum pump. It is actually an automotive air conditioning service pump. This means that while it works well for pulling a vacuum, there are some significant issues that must be dealt with when using it in a freeze dryer.

Care of the Pump

This pump is designed to pull a hard vacuum. It is not designed to process a significant amount of moisture. As a result, even though the vacuum chamber and freezer section are relatively maintenance free, the vacuum pump is not. You will have to mess with the pump on every batch. Remember that this is an “oil” pump,, so it will be messy. Just like you can’t deep fry on your stove top without getting oil on stuff next to the fry pan, you won’t be able to perform maintenance on this pump without getting some oil on the pump, you, and the counter or table on which the machine is sitting.

The simplest maintenance is to just drain off a bit of liquid from the pump while it is cool. This will drain off any water that has accumulated in the pump. Then replace the portion you drained off with fresh oil through the top. There are a couple of caveats though:

We always perform this maintenance immediately after loading the machine, while the freeze cycle is running. This makes sure that the pump is cooled off and the water and oil have separated.

Contamination

Because of the simplicity of the single chamber design, more moisture is pulled through the pump than what it is designed for. For this reason, you must perform that simple drain step mentioned above every time you use it. Failure to do that means that you will contaminate the oil beyond repair, and you will have to change the entire oil out prematurely.

Some foods also have a tendency to “outgas” particles. Foods that contain significant amounts of chlorophyll will turn your oil green and fill the pump up with gunk. You must change the oil out before it starts to accumulate inside the pump, or you will end up having to disassemble the pump and scrub it out with a toothbrush.

Changing

Changing the oil [5] is a messy job. To change it properly, you must follow Harvest Right’s instructions, which involve running the oil through while the unit is running. This does result in oil spray, and you will get it on you. You can get away with not following these instructions a few times if you don’t have heavily contaminated oil or built up gunk in the oil chamber, but you will eventually have to do it. If the unit is sitting in your house, you will be faced with the dilemma of removing the pump and physically bringing it to a place where the mess doesn’t matter or cleaning the mess up afterwards. No matter what anyone tells you, it’s messy.

Short Cycles Of Most Foods By Default

The unit, as delivered, has a tendency to short cycle most foods. It does give you the option to run it for a couple more hours at the end of the cycle without causing any issues. But when it does this every time, you begin to wonder why you can’t program a default mode that increases the finishing time. This isn’t a huge issue, but it is annoying. If you are running a series of batches and you know ahead of time how much more dry time is needed, you can start the unit with that information. However, it’s a trial and error process.

Lack of Tray Storage

We store the empty trays on top of the unit, but they do not stack nicely. Every once in a while, there is a cascading crash as one or more trays falls off the unit to the floor. No damage is done. Still, when it happens at one in the morning, it is jolting. It would be nice if the unit had some sort of storage capability, even as a add on, for empty trays. I’ll probably end up making one out of stainless steel wire.

No Easy Way To Clean Drain

As I mentioned before, there is no easy way to clean the drain in the unit. If you have an accident, you are stuck running buckets of water while you try to clean up the drain or completely disassemble the drain. This isn’t convenient, as you have to work around the freezer unit, which has fragile fins on it. Accidents of this type are not common, but they do happen.

Loud

The freezer motor is no louder than a normal refrigerator, but the vacuum pump is annoyingly loud. The frequency of noise generated by the pump is right in the middle of the voice spectrum. So, for those of us who are normally hard of hearing, it becomes nearly impossible to carry on a conversation without raising your voice. This is okay if the unit is running in your garage, but it’s not okay if in your house. Even with the unit behind a closed door in the laundry room, it makes considerable noise.

We have started trying to time the running of the unit so that it is not running when we have company.

Power

No question about it. You will notice an increase in your power usage. I don’t think it is unreasonable to expect a $30 to $40 increase in your bill during normal usage. Depending on how much you pay for electricity, you could see more or less of an increase. If we keep the machine running non-stop for the month, that amount increases to about $60. That may seem like alot, but when you consider how expensive ready-made freeze dried foods are, it is a drop in the bucket. You will spend about $50 more a month and produce many hundred dollars of food in the process. I’ll talk about the actual numbers we saw tomorrow.

Next Time

In Part 2, we will talk about the “Ugly” aspects of this machine. The “ugly” are those things that can make you really hate the machine. Then, because we don’t want to end the series on a negative note, we’ll talk about “The Bold and the Beautiful” – those things that make you really love the machine in spite of the operating drawbacks. We’ll also include some pictures of actual product

Comments Disabled (Open | Close)

Comments Disabled To "Harvest Right: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly – Part 1, by HJL"

#1 Comment By Ken in Ohio On July 8, 2017 @ 10:08 am

Guys, I don’t know anyone in my small and limited circle who can AFFORD one of these, much less a $60 increase in electric cost per month.

We here “down in the Boondocks” don’t have the bucks or revenue stream to support this item.

just my .02

#2 Comment By Hugh James Latimer On July 8, 2017 @ 12:56 pm

@ken,

I’ll address that concern in the next installment.

#3 Comment By Trapper John On July 9, 2017 @ 12:34 am

Regarding vacuum pump oil source. This sounds like the oil I used in my vacuum pump when servicing refrigeration equipment several years ago. I purchased it by the gallon at the refrigeration equipment supply house when I needed to service the vacuum pump. Your local refrigeration service technician may be able to suggest a local source if you don’t want to order it online. I always compared prices for the best deal.

#4 Comment By Jason On July 9, 2017 @ 12:30 am

It’s not cheap by any stretch of the imagination. And my income is very modest. But I will say that it’s not totally unaffordable if it’s a priority. How many long guns do you have versus how many you need? How many of those can you eat when the shelves have been bare for 6 months and a blight just decimated your garden? 2 quick sales of surplus bang-sticks nets more than a substantial down payment, and there layaway option takes care of the rest. Please note that I am NOT advocating leaving yourself disarmed in order to buy this. But if you’re like many of us, our redundancy efforts have left us with more than one commodity we could part with….

#5 Comment By Pete On July 8, 2017 @ 1:26 pm

For my first 18 years of life and the last 20 years, I have lived off grid. I know the capabilities of my power supply, and am quite sure this freeze dry operation is a no fit for the off grid living.

#6 Comment By Bart On July 8, 2017 @ 1:27 pm

We afford those things that are important to us in our lives. I live about a half-hour’s drive from the edge of nowhere (i.e., “the Boondocks”) and saw the need and value of one of these devices immediately.

#7 Comment By Hans On July 8, 2017 @ 2:32 pm

Draining issue:
I set up my unit dead level on a counter in the garage. Believe me, you don’t want this in your kitchen. It is noisy and can be a little messy at times. But maintenance is no worse than most other machinery issues.
I put a 1×4 under the front legs for draining for everything except liquids. I can easily place a 1×4 about 16″ long straight under the front of the unit as a lever, lift up a little and place a 1×4 under the legs. Remove the 1×4 when doing liquids so the unit is level and put the 1×4 back under when the liquids are done to drain.
As for the vacuum pump: After every cycle I immediately place a 1×4 under the back of the pump so the oil & water will flow forward while still warm. I don’t drain it yet, let it sit for an hour so the water will flow forward. I also rock it back and forth gently from side to side to get oil and water off the top of the interior housing & shield. Then I drain the unit completely, rocking gently back and forth and forward to back & run the oil thru the Harvey Filter for reuse. I manually clean the pump after 20 or so cycles.
All in all, I am extremely please with the FD and Harvest Right as they have been extremely helpful with any minor issues I have had-replaced the locking handle when I twisted it completely off the first time I used it because I didn’t think it was tight enough (no vacuum on it yet), replace one of the trays that was leaking in a corner when doing liquids.
As for affordability, no-brainer. Just look at the contents of some of the commercial products. I can control the amount of salt, sugar, etc. to suit my diet vs. the cost of the commercial stuff. I guess it depends on how badly you want to be independent.
Thanks survivalblog and Harvest Right.

#8 Comment By patientmomma On July 8, 2017 @ 4:35 pm

Freeze dried food is expensive but it really lasts a long time (25-30+ years). A #10 can of chicken is around $35 on sale while beef is around $50 on sale. I saved my pennies for 4 years and I recently received my new H.R. freeze dryer. I have only used it 3 times, testing it out on different types of food.

I live in the country on the grid, but with backup off grid necessities. I have personally slaughtered and harvested all my meat and poultry grown on my property. My main reason for purchasing the freeze-dryer was to FD 400 pds of pork, 160 pds of chicken, 80 pds of beef, and 50 pds of rabbit currently stored in 4 freezers. In a full grid down situation, I would have to very quickly pressure can all the meat while I still had propane to run my propane generator.

The expensive sacrifice to buy the freeze-dryer seems worth it when looking at the possibility of losing all that food. There are things I don’t like about the unit but they are small annoyances rather than show stoppers. Now that I have a better handle on oil changes and timing I will begin FDing the contents of my freezers. And, OBTW, my first full load of pork came out perfectly.

#9 Comment By TexasScout On July 8, 2017 @ 5:04 pm

Re: water in the vacuum pump

There are many “air separator/driers” (desiccant dryers) out there. Have you tried getting rid of the free water/water vapor before it gets to the pump?

#10 Comment By Hugh James Latimer On July 8, 2017 @ 10:57 pm

The “air separator/driers” don’t work in a hard vacuum. After the initial pump-down there is no “air”. The system works by pulling a hard vacuum where the water will sublimate (change from solid directly to vapor). The only way to get it out at that point is to refreeze it. The chamber wall has a very large surface area and is cold enough that the individual molecules will attach to it (or other water molecules that are already frozen there.) Because the pump is what creates the vacuum, a small percentage of the water vapor is drawn into the vacuum line before it ever gets a chance to refreeze along the chamber wall.
The reason the unit is relatively inexpensive is because it is this “single chamber” design. To be more efficient in refreezing the water before it traveled through the pump, you would have to have a separate refreeze chamber before the vacuum pump which would increase the cost of the unit. It’s a fair trade-off. You get a less costly unit with a slightly higher maintenance effort.

#11 Comment By Joseph On July 8, 2017 @ 6:34 pm

I drain the oil from the vacuum pump immediately, while still hot. I drain it into 2 liter pop bottles. I noticed that after a couple of weeks, the residue settles into the bottom of the bottles and the clear oil can be poured off. I have been continually re-using the clear oil that I pour off with no problems and it avoids the filtering, but you can still filter if it makes you feel better. If I’m not going to used the FD soon after draining the oil, I leave the drain and filler cap open to let any residual water evaporate. When I notice more contaminants draining, I have poured a little clean oil into the the pump, rocked it back and forth, and drained again. So far, so good.

#12 Comment By Dan Frank On July 8, 2017 @ 6:39 pm

We bought one of these (the newer mdl) about 6 months ago. The first thing noticed was that it’s VERY persnickety about the food prep. 1/2 inch and no thicker, and it must be in contact with the bottom of the tray.
Aside from the power consumption issue, there is the matter of the special oil for the vacuum pump. I have followed the mfg’s instructions for draining off excess water, power flushing and replacement and have already used almost 2 gallons of the stuff @ about $4/quart. This oil is something I have to have ordered as my local auto parts store doesn’t stock it.
The next issue is that this thing requires a significant commitment of time and energy. I have the 3-tray mdl and aside from maintenance and defrosting, it takes roughly 20mins to an hour to cut stuff up and place it on the tray.
I can’t even imagine a project like patientmomma’s! Sorry but if I had to do it over, I’d take the $2K+ bucks this thing cost and just buy a year’s worth of FD food from one of the many companies that offer package deals.
Dano