The Buyer’s Guide to Freeze Dryers
While freeze-dried foods have long been popular among restaurateurs and packaged-food manufacturers, freeze dryers are also becoming essential in other sectors of society—including the nascent cannabis concentrates market. The good news is that it has never been easier to compare a wide range of freeze dryers for home, commercial, or laboratory use.
Breaking Up Freeze Dried Ice Water Hash
If you’re thinking of purchasing a freeze dryer for your own personal or commercial needs, the trick is understanding what to look for. The specs you’ll find in a freeze dryer comparison are quite a bit different than for other types of products, so we’ve created this overview to help you make sense of it all.
Freeze-Drying Overview
Freeze-drying, or lyophilization, is defined by the Food and Drug Administration as “a process in which water is removed from a product after it is frozen and placed under a vacuum, allowing the ice to change directly from solid to vapor without passing through a liquid phase.”
There are three steps involved in the process:
Freezing
Sublimation (the initial drying)
Desorption (secondary drying)
First, the contents inside the freeze dryer are frozen to a temperature far below 0°F, sometimes close to -50°F. This is how the foods or products are prepared for sublimation.
The sublimation step is what makes freeze-drying unique. This process transforms the ice from a solid to a gas, bypassing the liquid phase entirely and allowing the original moisture to be removed in the form of gaseous water vapor. For this process, a high vacuum is used to reduce pressure inside the freeze dryer. Heat is also applied to assist in the conversion from ice to water vapor.
For the final step, a vacuum pump removes the air and vapor from the chamber, eliminating about 95% of moisture from the foods. At this point, the foods can be removed from the chamber and stored at room temperature.
Benefits Of Freeze-Drying
The benefits of freeze-drying are many, but they vary depending on the purpose for which the freeze dryer is being used.
Benefits of Freeze-Drying Foods
Freeze dryers are popular among campers, survivalists, culinary experts, and restaurant owners for several reasons.
Freeze-drying allows for conditions where foods can safely be stored at room temperature. Freeze-dried food is shelf-stable and food-safe for up to 30 years in some cases.
Freeze-drying allows foods to retain most of their original flavor and texture when rehydrated. This is because freeze-dried foods rehydrate more readily than dehydrated foods.
Freeze-drying locks in the nutrients of fruits, vegetables, and meats, ensuring that they retain most of the nutritional value that they had when fresh.
Home freeze dryers are more affordable in the long-run than purchasing commercially freeze-dried foods. Commercial producers of freeze-dried foods have markups as high as 85%, so a home freeze dryer can be an excellent investment.
Foods are easy to prepare for freeze-drying. Vegetables just need to be cleaned and blanched in some cases, and certain fruits may need to be pretreated to prevent browning. Meats can be freeze-dried in a cooked or raw state.
Freeze dryers can preserve foods that are otherwise non-preservable, like eggs and dairy products.
Freeze dryers are easy to use. In many cases, it’s as simple as arranging foods on the trays and pressing a button to start the freeze cycle. Many freeze dryers, though, do have custom settings and controls for users who want precision freeze-drying.
Benefits of Freeze-Drying Cannabis Concentrates
Cannabis processors, and especially hash makers, are also relying more on freeze dryers as they offset many of the challenges associated with making modern ice water hash (bubble hash).
Freeze dryers eliminate the residual moisture from ice water hash while maintaining temperatures below freezing.
Freeze dryers can dry hash up to 7 times faster than air drying.
Freeze-drying preserves the cannabinoids and terpenes, contributing to better flavors and aromas and a better overall experience for consumers.
Freeze dryers can lighten the color of the hash, contributing to a more attractive and marketable aesthetic.
Freeze-drying can dramatically extend the shelf life of hash concentrates.
Freeze dryers take the difficulty and labor out of the hash drying process. Just set it and forget it.
Ice Water Hash Going Into Freeze Dryer
Types Of Freeze Dryers
When shopping for freeze dryers, you’ll often find them labeled according to the intended customer. Harvest Right, for instance, uses categories like Home, Pharmaceutical, and Commercial. Some manufacturers also offer Scientific freeze dryers.The meanings of these terms can vary from one manufacturer to the next, so it’s always important
to check the specs.
Home Freeze Dryers
As the name suggests, these are intended for freeze-drying foods at home. They tend to be smaller in size and capacity, more affordable than the alternatives, and simple in their design. You won’t find as many customization settings with this type of small freeze dryer. In some cases, they have a single button to activate the freeze-drying cycle.
Pharmaceutical Freeze Dryers
Pharmaceutical freeze dryers come in a range of sizes, but they’re specially designed to accommodate organic materials that aren’t food-based. They’re often marketed for bubble hash, herbs, oils, pharmaceuticals, and medicines. The vacuum pressure and drying temperature can be customized by the user to accommodate whatever type of organic material is being frozen.
Commercial Freeze Dryers
The “commercial” designation usually signifies a larger capacity or professional-grade features. These freeze dryers are sometimes custom-built, generally suitable for both food and pharmaceutical use, and almost always equipped with customizable settings. While some commercial freeze dryers weigh under 200 pounds, some of the largest commercial freeze dryers are up to 4,000 pounds.
Scientific Freeze Dryers
Harvest Right Scientific Freeze Dryer Programming Touch Screen
Scientific freeze dryers are often used in research labs and equipped with precise customization settings.
unit and vacuum pump and the ability to input custom temperature settings throughout each step of the freeze-drying process.
The rate of freeze can be sped up or slowed down as needed. This type of control allows for maximum precision and the use of custom recipes.
