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How much WATER does Freeze-Drying remove from Fruit? Part 1 - Gross vs Net Weight | Prep & Tools
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May 15, 2025
Have you ever wondered how much water is removed during the freeze-drying process? In this video, I freeze-dry five fruits including pineapple, apples, strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries to see how much weight is lost in water content. I share the gross weight, tools used to prepare and cut the fruit, freeze-dried final product, and the net weight of each individual fruit amount. If you are running a freeze-dried business and want to improve your forecasting for production, watch this video. You may also be interested in my latest video on freeze-drying blueberries with the #1 tool that has saved me an enormous amount of time and money - https://youtu.be/e0ghQucJoTk Timestamps: 1:43 Tools for Cutting & Preparing Fruit 3:32 Blueberries 6:24 Raspberries 7:58 Strawberries 10:21 Pineapple 12:46 Apples 15:09 How to price freeze-dried fruit for your business You can support my channel by purchasing items from the links below for either personal use or your freeze-dried business. Thank you! Here are several freeze-dryers I use in my business and I would recommend considering them for your existing freeze-dried business or just starting out. - Harvest Right Freeze Dryers - https://affiliates.harvestright.com/1974.html - StayFresh Freeze Dryers - https://stayfreshfreezedry.com/?sca_ref=3292008.4uBi4MIG3W&sca_source=YouTube Interested in the Roller Berry tool?
View Video Transcript
0:00
a freeze dryer like the one next to me
0:01
removes water activity and moisture from
0:04
various different foods I've got several
0:06
different fruits that I'm going to show
0:07
you what the net weight is after freeze
0:09
drying let's get started
0:14
hey everyone welcome back to the freeze
0:16
dry business Channel my name is David
0:18
today is the first part to a new series
0:21
that I'm doing on Gross versus net
0:23
weight when it comes to freeze drying
0:25
because we know that freeze drying
0:26
removes the water activity and moisture
0:29
from various different foods and even
0:30
though this machine right behind me does
0:32
a lot of the work for us as a
0:34
freeze-dried business we really need to
0:35
know when we put 10 pounds of something
0:38
into our freeze dryer how much net
0:40
weight are we going to get so that we
0:41
can be more predictive and have a better
0:44
forecast of what type of production
0:46
we're going to get out of our freeze
0:47
dryer and a great example is if we put
0:49
10 pounds of let's say strawberries into
0:51
our freeze dryer and we only get one
0:54
pound of freeze-dried strawberries how
0:57
many bags can we actually put out there
0:59
for customers to buy that knowledge is
1:02
really good for us to know so that we
1:04
can predict and forecast how many
1:06
different Cycles we need to do in order
1:08
to fulfill orders and get ready for
1:10
events whether you're in cottage food or
1:13
if you're commercially licensed and
1:14
you're just doing wholesale to prepare
1:16
for those orders I'm going to do five
1:18
fruits that are really my top sellers
1:20
and in future videos within this series
1:22
we'll do other types of items and
1:24
different products that you've selected
1:26
or I've chosen and we'll see how those
1:29
gross weights change to net weights
1:31
after the freeze drying process the
1:33
fruits that we're going to do today to
1:35
see gross versus net weight is we're
1:37
going to do pineapple we're going to do
1:38
raspberries strawberries blueberries and
1:42
apples all right here are all the tools
1:43
that I use to prepare fruit these have
1:46
really helped me be more efficient in my
1:47
business and get these fruits prepared
1:50
very quickly and easily now if you're
1:53
interested in purchasing any of these
1:54
I've got links in the video description
1:56
of this video that link directly to
1:59
Amazon they are affiliate links so I do
2:01
get a small commission and for the very
2:03
small amount that Amazon does give me in
2:05
commission I use it directly to buy
2:07
different tools and things that I'm
2:09
seeing that would be beneficial for all
2:10
of you to see me use for this freeze
2:13
drying Channel all right so what we've
2:15
got here is I've got a knife sharpener
2:17
this is an antique sharpener I don't
2:18
think you're going to find that on the
2:20
Amazon links but I do have one that's
2:21
more modern on there this is a egg
2:24
slicer that I use for strawberries to
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slice into different pieces now this is
2:30
an apple core so this goes directly into
2:33
the core which I'll show you of the
2:34
pineapple and then after you get it
2:36
cored you slice this down and it gets
2:38
you really nice bite-sized pieces with
2:40
this piece I got a really great knife if
2:43
you're interested in purchasing a grid
2:45
Knife Set I've got a link in the
2:47
description here and then I've also got
2:49
of course the roller Berry which I did a
2:51
video on and this pokes the skin of
2:53
blueberries so that the moisture
2:55
releases and you get a really nice
2:56
crispy blueberry and it drops the
2:59
blueberries with this little groove
3:01
right here also I've got this apple
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slicer now this is actually more of a
3:06
potato slicer believe it or not for
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fries but I use it for apples and you
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put it in here then you slide this lever
3:12
and it creates all these different nice
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little small bite-sized fry slices for
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apples my customers love this and it has
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these suction cups here so you get a
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really good amount of Leverage when
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you're slicing the the apples this is a
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great device all of these are in the
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video description if you'd like to
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purchase
3:33
all right so let's get started with
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blueberries so what I've got is a scale
3:36
here that will measure the gross and net
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weight but I wanted to make sure I
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showed you what I'm kind of doing within
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this video so for blueberries here that
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I've already washed what I did is I I
3:47
really looked for a tray it's worth in
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the large freeze dryer worth of fruit
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and I made sure that I did a pound of
3:56
every type of fruit or more and so this
3:59
is a carton of blueberries it's six
4:02
ounces growth starting out and I did
4:04
three of those so what we're going to do
4:06
is we're going to turn on the scale now
4:08
I'm going to use this bowl and then I'm
4:10
going to tear it off so that it gets to
4:12
zero and then we're going to pour the
4:14
blueberries into this bowl for the
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blueberries it's one pound and three
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ounces so that's what we'll start with
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with the blueberries now it's time to
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use the roller Berry and get the
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blueberries poked all right so for all
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the fruit that I do in this video I'm
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gonna put them on baking sheets so that
4:30
we can pre-freeze them in the freezer
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now I use this Reynolds kitchen freezer
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paper it has kind of a shiny side that's
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more for the non-stick so that way I
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tear off five different sheets I put
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them on the baking sheets and that way
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when I put the fruit on them they don't
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stick after Frozen and then I'm just
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going to transfer them over into the
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freeze dryer trays for my freeze dryer
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all right so let's start poking the
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blueberries again I use a Harvest Right
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tray and silicone mat to line these up
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and if you'd like to buy Harvest Right
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mats you can obviously go to their
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website I've got a link in the
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description and just transfer the
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blueberries over to the freezer paper
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you want to have the shiny side up and
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then we just keep doing the blueberries
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foreign
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[Music]
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this is 18 ounces of blueberries poked
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and all with the roller Berry I'm going
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to put this into the freezer so we'll
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pre-freeze it and then we'll get into
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the freeze dryer and see what the net
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weight is of 18 ounces of blueberries
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all right the blueberries are done take
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a look at this this is what your
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freeze-dried blue areas should look like
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when you poke the skin it shouldn't look
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like this one this one wasn't poked as
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you can see it kind of exploded the rest
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of them did not so this is a good solid
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batch of blueberries now if you recall
6:00
what we did with the blueberries this
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gross weight was about 18 ounces we did
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three packs of six ounce of the
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blueberries let's see how much
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the blueberries get for net weight all
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right so let's take a look at the
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results after we put in 18 ounces of
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blueberries starting out we got after
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freeze drying 2.3 net ounces of
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freeze-dried blueberries
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all right next up is raspberries this is
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another six ounce Carton and I put three
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raspberries I've already washed all of
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these raspberries so we're going to
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transfer it to this bowl let it zero out
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then let's put the raspberries on there
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all right so what we've got here for
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gross rate for The Raspberries of just a
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little bit over a pound so we've got a
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pound and roughly maybe two to three
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ounces of raspberries so we'll put that
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onto the baking sheet and then put it in
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the freezer
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[Music]
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all right so here's a pound of
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raspberries we'll put this into the
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freezer let it pre-freeze and then we'll
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put it in the freeze dryer this is what
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freeze dried raspberries looks like
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becomes super crunchy I'll smash one of
7:12
these just super Airy it's very tart but
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very delicious great for smoothies
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yogurts that's how I would Market it and
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just excellent excellent fruit to freeze
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dry we're going to put them into the
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bowl
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and let's see what it came out to all
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right so how much did we get from 18
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ounces of raspberries 2.2 net ounces
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were produced from freeze drying
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raspberries I do want to invite you to a
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couple of my other videos there's a lot
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of other videos on how to do different
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candies fruits and I even do ice cream
7:46
so check that out and as always if you
7:48
enjoyed this video please hit the like
7:50
button but also subscribe to the channel
7:52
so that you can be notified of future
7:54
videos and join us in this freeze giant
7:56
Community thanks
7:59
all right so let's get started with
8:01
strawberries now and what we're going to
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do is we're going to cut off the stems
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of the strawberries that are already
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washed so that we can figure out the
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gross weight of that versus with the
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stems on and then we'll put them on the
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baking sheet using the freezer paper and
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put them into the freezer
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[Music]
8:29
foreign
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[Music]
8:47
now that the stems are off the
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strawberries we're going to weigh the
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gross weight that way we know where we
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started I'm doing two pounds of
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strawberries out of these cartons so
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there's one and then another one of
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these put the bowl on here and tear it
9:00
off and then we're gonna pour the
9:02
strawberries in here all right sweet so
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we're starting off with two pounds of
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strawberries with the stems off which is
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awesome I'm going to go ahead and slice
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these strawberries and then we'll put it
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on the baking sheet and put it in the
9:13
freezer
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[Music]
9:25
foreign
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[Music]
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this is two pounds of strawberries all
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the gross great so we're gonna put this
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into the freezer and then we'll see what
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the net weight comes out okay here we go
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with strawberries these are freeze dried
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strawberries they should be very crispy
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and Airy and look like this and just
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basically snap in half these are awesome
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this is probably my one of my favorite
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fruits to do so what we did here was
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about two pounds of gross weight for the
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strawberries
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okay so what do we get for the
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strawberries we got 3.4 net ounces from
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two pounds of strawberries all sliced
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and all
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right so one of my favorite fruits
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that's freeze-dried but I don't do it as
10:26
much as I should is pineapple I've got
10:29
two Pineapple we'll core it using this
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core and then we'll put all those slices
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into a bowl and figure out the gross
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weight so let's do that
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[Music]
10:44
so now we're ready to core the pineapple
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[Music]
10:49
it's a really ripe
10:51
pineapple as you can tell by the
10:54
outside layer but that's okay
10:57
I just wanted to get
10:59
some pineapple for this video to kind of
11:01
see how much we're gonna get we're going
11:03
to use now this
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slicer and this goes all the way down
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and gets you into like the little
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bite-sized pieces now pineapple does
11:12
take a little bit longer to freeze dry
11:13
because it has a lot of sugar in it and
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so I've found that sometimes it just
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takes a long time to dry and also just
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doesn't dry all the way it's kind of
11:22
inconsistent but I really do like it
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when it freeze dries really well okay so
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just like all the other fruit we're
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going to put this bowl on the scale
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we're going to tear it off so that when
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we put the pineapple on we have the
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exact weight two pineapples all sliced
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and cord
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we've got one pound and almost 15 ounces
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so almost two pounds of pineapples out
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of two pineapples that are cored and
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sliced all right so here's the pineapple
11:51
that we cored and sliced now this was
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two full pineapples cored and sliced and
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what it got us was on the gross weight
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two pounds roughly so we'll put this
12:02
into the freezer freeze dried pineapple
12:04
is super delicious man the flavor is
12:06
just fantastic now
12:08
sometimes you do need to freeze dry this
12:10
a little bit longer I've checked a lot
12:12
of these and it should kind of sound
12:13
like what you're hearing it should sound
12:16
like it's dry and just kind of crumbling
12:18
up and breaking apart like this and with
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pineapple we did two large pineapples we
12:23
cored it and we sliced it and so we got
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about two pounds of pineapple that we
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freeze dried and we put on this tray
12:30
then we're gonna put it into the bowl
12:35
and let's see what it comes out to all
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right so what do we get from Pineapple
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we got five net ounces from two pounds
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of pineapple sliced and cord awesome
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all right last fruit on our list for
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this video is going to be apples I've
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got some gala apples this is about two
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pounds of apples there's only five of
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them now this is one of my favorite
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tools for prepping fruit other than the
13:01
roller Berry this is a fry slicer that I
13:04
found off at Amazon this is fantastic
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you put the Apple into this apple core
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and then you push this lever and it
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slices out the Apple into these little
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pieces that look like fries I separate
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out all the good pieces from what the
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core had because I don't know I don't
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really want to eat the part of the core
13:28
that has the seeds in it if after it's
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freeze-dried so this is what I discard
13:32
is the pieces that have the seeds in
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them we're going to core the all these
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apples
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and see what we get for a gross weight
13:42
after I remove those slices
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[Music]
13:58
all right so let's see how much this
14:00
weighs as part of a gross once we've
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sliced them all all right we've got the
14:05
food scale now let's put the bowl on and
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let's tear it off and then we're gonna
14:08
put all the apples
14:11
back in the bowl
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to weigh it
14:18
all right so look what we've got here
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we've got one pound and 12 ounces gross
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weight for all these apple slices so
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we'll put them onto the baking sheet and
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then we'll put them into the freezer and
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we'll see what happens after we freeze
14:31
dry All Right freeze dried apples are
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out and we cut them with that potato fry
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slicer which I love so these look like
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apple fries these are just awesome they
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look very snacky that's why I like doing
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that potato slicer and fry slicer so
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we're just going to break these apart we
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did five gala apples these are gala
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apples we did five of them so let's see
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what that comes out to after freeze
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drying okay the big reveal how much did
15:00
we get from five gala apples we got 4.3
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net ounces of freeze-dried apple fries
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[Music]
15:11
I wanted to address a couple questions
15:12
that usually come up in my videos which
15:14
is you know if you're starting out doing
15:16
a freeze dry business or you're
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currently doing one one of the things
15:19
you're trying to evaluate is what the
15:21
price is going to be on your packages
15:23
based on various sizes but also you know
15:26
how much weight or how much product do
15:28
you put in there so to answer that
15:29
question I really didn't make it too
15:31
complicated on myself when I first
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started out and even to this day I went
15:35
online I did some Google searches I went
15:37
on to Etsy and I looked to see what
15:39
other freeze drying companies were
15:41
pricing their products at and the net
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weight and what I found to be more
15:45
consistent online and from other freeze
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dry companies including large companies
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like the brands that you see at Target
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and Trader Joe's freeze drying fruit
15:52
generally about one net ounce of
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freeze-dried fruit is gonna run about
15:58
six to seven dollars I add probably two
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to three dollars for my end because I'm
16:04
a local small business it's a little bit
16:06
more premium I'm not mass producing it
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I'm more pricing it as a local premium
16:12
freeze-dried fruit product so that's
16:14
what I would suggest you doing is kind
16:16
of looking at about an ounce of product
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and then marking it up to probably about
16:22
nine to ten dollars per ounce you need
16:24
to evaluate you know how much labor
16:26
you're putting into prepping all that
16:28
fruit as you saw earlier in this video
16:30
it did take a lot of time to prep and
16:33
slice and do different types of fruit
16:34
maybe raspberries was one of those that
16:36
didn't take that much time but you
16:38
really do need to take into account the
16:40
time and labor that you're putting into
16:42
that and also you're not adding any
16:43
preservatives or sugars like some of the
16:46
other companies might be doing so to
16:48
recap the answer is those larger
16:50
companies that are mass producing
16:51
freeze-dried fruit they are pricing
16:53
about one net ounce of fruit for about
16:57
six to seven dollars so for the smaller
16:59
business freeze-dried companies I would
17:01
recommend pricing that up about two to
17:03
three more dollars I'm still selling all
17:05
the fruit that I put out there to my
17:07
customers and in retail stores it still
17:09
seems to be demanding that type of price
17:11
nice hey that was awesome figuring out
17:13
the gross and net weight of all these
17:15
different fruits I think this is really
17:16
helpful just for you to evaluate and
17:19
figure out what you can forecast for all
17:21
the different Cycles based on how many
17:22
pounds you need to buy at the store and
17:24
then how many you're going to actually
17:26
get out of freeze drying in that cycle
17:28
because it's all about just knowing how
17:30
quickly you can get stuff freeze dry but
17:32
also how much bags you can get so you
17:34
can get out there and sell so I hope
17:36
this video was helpful make sure you
17:37
subscribe to this Channel and join us in
17:39
the freeze drying Community thanks again
17:41
for watching and do something great for
17:42
your community for freeze drying as a
17:45
business see ya
17:49
[Music]
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