Freeze-Dry or Die Trying
With our new retail space secured, we began looking for freeze-dryers. Most of the lower-cost ones were tens of thousands while the larger commercial units were over $100,000—completely out of reach. Then we discovered the Harvest Right home unit. As if they knew we were coming, they just launched their first model for under $3,500. It was compact, affordable and perfect for testing.
Scott Neville, VP of sales at Harvest Right, was a game-changer from the start. He not only walked us through ordering, delivery and setup but also helped us troubleshoot when things went wrong. I called him so many times eventually he gave me his cell number. His support made all the difference and to this day I'm not sure we could have done any of it without him.
But the real challenge was that every experiment took over 30hrs of freeze-drying. Over the course of months we tried every method we could think of—cutting the berries into multiple parts, into different ways, preserving them whole, even poking holes. We played around with the timing, the temperature and we'd get our hopes up thinking that the next run would be the one, then open it up to find a dud.
A few times we came close but the results were inconsistent because the berries never entered the freeze-dryer the same way twice. We figured if we wanted consistency, we'd need a uniform method that didn’t involve overnight shipments with dry ice from Miami to LA. There had to be a better way! Maybe we had it backwards: instead of bringing the berries to the freeze-dryer we should bring the freeze-dryer to the berries!
That meant the next big gamble would be convincing our farmer to let us bring the freeze-dryer to the farm. Would he see the potential or would we be back to square one? Stay tuned!
Meanwhile, I decided to experiment with my mom’s favorite fruit, the pomegranate. I’ve always loved them but wished they were a bit sweeter. POM Wonderful juice was great in theory but a bit too tart and bitter for my liking. So, I picked up a fresh pomegranate and a bottle of POM juice to test them on the berry.
I let the miracle berry coat my tongue for 30 seconds while I tore open the pomegranate. When I tasted it, it was like the pomegranate had been kissed by the sun, its sweetness amplified to candy status. Each ruby-like aril burst with a delightful flavor that was perfection.
Then I tried the POM juice and was pleasantly surprised by how much sweeter and enjoyable it had become. If I needed a quick pomegranate fix on the go without the mess, the POM juice was a worthy, delicious stand-in.
Next week I'll share what happened when I tried another juice that became my hack for bedtime sweetness plus a few more benefits that you won't want to miss.
And as always, your hidden 48 hr 20% off alphanumeric code is hiding in plain sight. Look closely at the text—did you spot a word that’s formatted oddly? Enter it exactly as shown!
-Hank