hey guys are retired at 40 it's been a while since I've done a freeze dryer
video so my apologies for that but today we're going to talk about one
of the most important accessories that you can get for your freeze dryer and
then we're going to put it to the test by doing a cycle so the most important
thing you can do for your freeze dryer is give it some good oil and I've tried
quite a few different types of vacuum pump oil and I finally found the one
that does a night-and-day difference in my opinion it's a little bit harder to
find some Tractor Supply places will carry it but it's called Dairyland oil
and it's actually meant for milking pumps milking vacuum pumps so a lot of
the places you find it are Tractor Supply places true value carries that
sometimes or you can order it from Amazon or other internet retailers I
actually ordered this from Amazon because my tractor supply place thats
close to me does not carry it surprisingly so I'll put a link to where
I got it from so what makes this vacuum pump oil a little different than from
any other vacuum pump oil there's a couple different things it has some
additives in it that will actually lubricate the internals of the pump and
especially if you have the older pump then you know that it is very prone to
just building up that crud inside of it it also has some anti foam additives in
it which I don't really know that pertains a whole lot to the harvest
right situation but there are their oxidation inhibitors in it and it also
has corrosion protection which is also very important for the older pump and I
would assume the newer pump also because anytime you're getting water mixed in
with things that are steel they're going to rust it's just a matter of time
so since I started using this type of oil I've noticed that the inside of my
vacuum pump stays a lot more clean a few months back or several months back I
made a video on how to clean the pump I still have the old pump because I'm
kind of just waiting for it to die so I can get the newer one but if you
remember the inside of my pump was completely filthy I was using black gold
oil at the time and I've used a handful of other things that are very similar to
that type of oil but as soon as I started using this oil the inside was
way more clean because it would actually it wouldn't allow all that gunk to build
up inside of it so I want to show you a couple differences between this oil and
then I'm going to show you the results that I get with my typical oil that I
use the black gold and the the difference that it makes when you're
using the Dairyland all right so here's some of my old oil
and I'll go ahead and drain my last batch you can see there's a lot of water
in it and usually you've got lots of crud it goes from kind of a light oil
color to just a real dark oil with a bunch of junk in it you can see all the
sediment down here at the bottom you can see the water kind of separating away
from the oil
while this last batch finishes draining I'm gonna go upstairs and load up my
trays with vegetable broth I've never done vegetable broth before I'm going to
use that for my experiment here and we're going to load it up with the
Dairyland oil and see what kind of difference it makes in a complete cycle
all right so we make this homemade vegetable stock we just save our
vegetable scraps pretty much and we make this vegetable stock but the problem is
is it doesn't keep very long and you can freeze it but I figured if you can
freeze it you could also freeze dry it
all right I'm gonna go stick these in the deep freeze so I can get them frozen
and like usual I like to make my life difficult so I could have just filled
them up in the deep freezer but I don't know don't try this at home put the tray
in and then fill it up so you don't spill it everywhere like I do all right
for trays of vegetable stock let's go downstairs and fill up the vacuum pump
all right it looks like our vacuum pump is completely drained
we got this nasty oil out of here now let's put the good stuff in
so the first difference that you will notice is that it's blue and it almost
looks like laundry detergent and this one that I bought I'm not sure if they
sell different sizes the one I always buy is the one gallon that gets you a
whole lot of usage you can still recycle the oil still filter it and really
depending on how much you use it should last you a month or two or even three
okay so you can see that it's blue now instead of your typical oil color but
you can see all this crud that has gathered at the bottom of the window I'm
sure that everyone has this problem and to be fair this first cycle with a new
oil will probably actually just clean a lot of that junk out but time will tell
here in the meantime we're gonna wait for our trays to freeze and then we'll
get a cycle going I also want to give a shout out to the viewers and the
community because they are the ones who helped me discover this oil I would
still be using the black gold or jb vacuum pump oil and its little tips and
tricks like this that help the entire freeze-drying community benefit so with
that said if you ever have any tips and tricks feel free to leave a comment for
me if you need help with anything let me know take a moment to subscribe to the
channel we do some freeze drying and food preservation we do some cooking
some gardening and you get to join me and my family on our retirement at the
age of 40 and if you find the video is helpful make sure you give me a thumbs
up okay our trays are frozen I'm gonna get our pre freeze going and I'm
gonna do nine hours of final dry we might end up needing more than that just
because that's pretty much a pure liquid form
and we're gonna be pre frozen and half an hour I'm gonna go grab the trays all
right we'll see you guys in a while we'll see if this oil makes a difference
all right add some time last night when I went to bed so this should be plenty
done all right I'm gonna run this vegetable broth upstairs so we can check
it out later but right now I'm going to drain the oil out of the pump and I want
to see what it looks like it's kind of hard to see now because it's already a
little bit full but you can definitely tell that it cleaned out a lot of the
crap it was already in there and now it's at the bottom alright the vegetable
broth turned out exactly how you want it it's super dry obviously there's not
going to be much left after you take the water out of it but if you think about
what you buy in the store it only takes about a teaspoon to make a cup or so
this was the equivalent of an entire pitcher full of vegetable broth this is
gonna work great just need to scrape this all in put it into a jar
you've got vegetable broth whenever you need it no question in my mind this will
rehydrate absolutely perfect just the way you want it to be it's got that
right consistency so if you want to make homemade vegetable broth it's really
easy we actually just take our scraps that we that we use from dinner or
whatever you don't want to put anything into it that's gonna make it bitter so
don't put any asparagus don't put any brussel sprouts
things like that stuff that we usually say we do carrots celery we do onions
garlic things that are really gonna make the flavor pop out so we just throw them
all into a bag and then throw the ziplock bag into the freezer you want
about five cups of scraps before you start it and then you just boil it in 9
cups of water so put your 9 cups of water and your 5
cups of scraps in and then you just want to boil it on medium heat for about an
hour to get all the flavor out of it and then
ready to go but I'm really interested in is to see what the inside of the pump
looks like even after one cycle to see how the oil looks and if it built up any
crud in there these are the kind of things that I'm willing to do for the
greater good of the freeze dried community all right let's get this thing
opened up and see what it looks like inside need a 3/16 allen key and you
just need to pop all these screws loose
so here's the interesting part usually when I do this all this crud is kind of
all over the place and it's already cleaned all of that stuff off and sent
it to the bottom so eventually that will just flush out when you do an oil change
and really the same thing on all the other pieces really impressed with this
oil this is after one thirty hour cycle
this stuff also comes out a lot easier usually you have to try pretty hard you
got to do some scraping and some some other stuff to get it out of there the
stuff is just coming right off with a paper towel all right well I can't
recommend the Dairyland enough if it does this after one cycle imagine what
it did will do if you just keep using it it's gonna keep your pump a lot cleaner
than it normally does again I'll put a link down below for the Amazon link you
can get it at some true values some JSC Tractor Supply places carry it and
probably a handful of other places that are farm type stores and the meantime
this is retired to 40 remember to live life simple I'll catch you next week