Excalibur Dehydrator

   / Excalibur Dehydrator #1  

dmccarty

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Triangle Of North Carolina
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We have been looking at food dehydrators for years. The round models I have seen have not seen large enough the reviews have been iffy at times. We eat quite a bit of dried fruits and we are planning to plant Blueberries and Apples this fall so it was time to look at dehydrators again. I read a bit of this and that as well as watched some YouTube videos. It seemed that quite a few of the videos were using the brand we ended up buying. The particular brand was rectangular with the heating and fan at the back of the unit not at the bottom. The round dehydrators have a heater and fan unit on the bottom which seems to lead to uneven drying AND these units seemed to have small capacities. The unit we bought was that it had five or nine trays which can dry a fair amount of food. The big clincher was that people said that they had their unit for 10-20 years with constant use and no problems. I found a special that included a 10 year warranty on the unit for free as well. I did not want to buy something that was going to break in a year or so.

So tell us what you bought already? :laughing::laughing::laughing:

We bought the Excalibur nine tray unit with a timer for $300. They sell units without the timer and that timer is a high profit item with them but I figured I don't want to dork with a separate timer on the plug. If this this last as long as I expect and we use it as much as I think we will the extra for the timer will be worth it. Look carefully on their site though. They had a special buried under a web page that included a book, non stick tray, 10 year warranty, free shipping, etc. It looks like that special is over but they might have another one so look.

We have been running the unit for a good month which means all day Saturday and Sunday. All day means 8-12 hours. The only nit I have with the unit is the knob that sets the temperature does not lock on the thermostat. It works just fine and I have not bothered to see why the knob did not lock. Another nit is that parts of the plastic mesh trays cannot be washed in the dish washer. I guess my last nit is the structural part of the tray. It is sturdy, but not sturdy enough, since the tray can flex under a full load of food WHEN being carried by one hand. Since we are keeping the dehydrator outside I use one hand to carry the tray and the other to open the door. With one handed use, the tray can flex which risks dropping food. I have started to put a regular cookie type tray under the Excalibur tray to stop the flexing when carrying one handed. This also help keep any drips from the food from getting on the floor. This is not a big deal and the dehydrator was inside would not be noticed by most people.

The wifey thought we should buy the five tray unit and not the nine tray. I figured we would be loading this thing up and it would be better to have an empty tray than to be needing an empty tray. The right decision was to buy the nine unit. The only time we have run it at less than full capacity was because I got busy with other things and could not process the food to put in the dehydrator. We had the food, just not the time.

I was going to hold off starting this discussion but the Doomsday thread pushed me to post earlier. :D My reason to hold off the discussion was non stick trays. The trays that ship with the Excalibur are in two parts. There is a structural 14x14 inch plastic tray that supports a plastic mesh tray. These are fine for drying jerky or chunks of fruits or veggies. However, an easy way to process fruits is to blend or food process into juice and make fruit leather aka roll ups. Since this turns a solid into a liquid the mesh trays ain't gonna work. We have been using plastic wrap, wrapped around the mesh tray. This works but the leather can stick to the plastic and can be hard to remove. Parchment paper might work better but we have not tried. Excalibur DOES sell non stick trays that would work real well for leathers but they want $80-90 for NINE which is outrageous. I found on Amazon a company selling 14x14 inch non stick trays for $24-25. These trays look just like what Excalibur is selling minus the brand name. The reviewers said they were the same but I have not received mine yet. I was hoping to try these out before posting this discussion but Doomsday has pushed me to post sooner. :laughing:

These non stick trays should be here soon so I can try them out over the weekend.

$300 is quite a bit of money but we eat a fair amount of jerky and even more dried fruit. We have had the Excalibur for about a month and I think we have saved $100 over buying store bought dried fruit. We certainly don't need to buy jerky again. The food is really easy to prepare for drying. It does take time but it is not bad and it is fun. A big problem is sampling. :licking: :D

The unit itself is maybe 16x18x18? I am guessing but the specs should be on the web site. It is kinda bulky but not bad. It is plastic and bulky but not that hard to move. We are keeping ours on the porch when in use to keep the noise, heat and humidity outside. In the winter, I suspect we will put it in the utility room to keep the heat and humidity in the house. It is not really noisy but I don't think you would want it in a space near the TV or near a conversation. Short of dropping this thing I don't see how it will break. There is a door that lifts simply off the front to allow the trays to slide in/out. The heater and fan are a simple assembly at the back of the unit. The fan blows the heated air over the trays with what seems to be an even distribution. I move the trays around as I check on the food but I don't really need to move the trays from top to bottom. It does help to rotate the trays away from the fan when drying food pieces. For leathers I don't bother.

Excalibur says the unit uses 600 watts. For fruits we have been running it at 135 degrees. Given that it has been 80-100 degrees outside the heater in the unit is not having to work hard. We have been drying for 8-12 hours so lets just say 10 hours on average. Worst case the Excalibur is using 6,000 watts over 10 hours or 6 KWH. We pay 10 cents per KWH so we might be paying 60 cents to dry nine trays of food. Nine trays could be four pints of Blueberries, four Apples cut into rings, two Pineapples, two Mangoes and one Papaya. That is quite a bit of food but dried down it would fit in a 3-4 plastic sandwich bags. Given what we would pay to buy dried food, 60 cents is cheap, and our food is just food. No added anything. Just the food.

I think that is about it for the Excalibur itself. I will post again on what we have been drying.

Later,
Dan
 
   / Excalibur Dehydrator
  • Thread Starter
#2  
We have barely started drying food. What we have dried so far:
  • Apples
  • Mangoes
  • Strawberries
  • Blueberries
  • Papayas
  • London Broil
  • Flax Seed Crackers
  • Rice Flour/Almond Crackers
  • Cherries

The 14x14 inch trays will handle roughly 2-3 Apple sized foods. That could be a fruit or say a cracker dough. Here is what we have found to fit on a single tray:
  • Two Apples sliced and cored
  • 2-3 pints of Blueberries blended into juice
  • A pound of slice Strawberries
  • A bag or about one pound of Cherries
  • 1-1.5 pounds of London Broil jerky
  • Diced Pineapple
  • Two Mangoes
  • One Papaya
  • Cracker dough made from about four cups of seeds/flour/dough and water.

Crackers we have just started making. These are crackers mostly made with seeds and nuts so they are heavy in protein, calories, and fat. The first batch was interesting. :D:D:D The recipes and videos are pretty simple. All one is trying to do is get the seeds/nuts blended into a dough. You can buy things like Almond flour but the usual technique is to soak the nuts/seed for 1/2 hour to many hours to make blending/food processing easier. Flax seeds are interesting. I was supposed to blend say one cup of Flax seeds into a sorta flour. The seeds would not be fully blended like a flour but shorta like whole wheat flour. Another cup was supposed to soak in water for 30 minutes or so. Well, I got sidetracked and I just dump the Flax seeds into the food processor and let it rip without blending the dried seeds first. The seeds soaking in water transformed into some sort of jello like form. When I poured this into the processor the clear film formed from the water and Flax seed formed some sort of miracle lubricate that prevented the processing of the seeds! :eek:

Ok whatever, this ain't rocket science, I am making crackers so I poured the mass on a sheet, spread it out, sprinkled on some salt and Sesame seeds and put it in the dehydrator. It work find but if not fully dried there was a strange consistency. :laughing: The second batch I did correctly and processed DRIED seeds first and then added the wet jello Flax seeds. These turned out much better. :licking::laughing:

In our first drying batch we did Apple rings, Apple leathers and Blueberries. The problem with whole fruit like Blueberries is drying time. There are so many danged Blueberries that dry at different rates you end of up some too dry or some too wet. Processing or blending the Blueberries into a liquid, pouring on tray, smoothing it out and drying is much better. Pretty danged easy too. The Apple leather I tried to make messed up because I added water which I should not have done. The Apples was good but it was more like an Apple crunch not a leather. I think the added water kept the Apple from staying together.

Most of the drying is just cutting into small sizes about 1/4 inch thick. Consistency is important to get it all to dry at the same time but it really does not matter much either.

Much of the learning curve has been in figuring out how thick to cut fruits and HOW to cut the fruit to get these thicknesses can be interesting. Papaya is interesting to cut up as are Mangoes but once you have done it once it is easy to do. A could peeler is helpful as well. We did buy an cherry pitter for $20ish which make pitting fast and easy. At this point we spend maybe two hours prepping the food for the dryer. Blueberries go quicker since there is no knife work. The drying will take all day, though fruit leathers, do dry in say 4-6 hours, since they have lots of surface area.

For fruits that will oxidize like Apples, mix up some water with Citric Acid aka Vitamin C, and put the cut up fruit into the water batch before drying. You can get Citric Acid at the grocery store next to the caning supplies. BTW dried Apples with a bit of Cinnamon is REALLY good.

We have been storing the food in plastic zip lock bags and plastic boxes. My guess is that vacuum bags would provide 6-12 month storage. The key is drying the food to 10-20% and keeping moisture out. Ours food has not lasted that long because it gets eaten pretty quickly.

Later,
Dan
 
   / Excalibur Dehydrator #3  
I bought this dehydrator (also square) a few years ago and am quite happy with it. No timer, though. Although you can just buy an outlet timer for $10 and pocket the $200 in savings. You can buy additional trays for it, which I did. I run 8 trays. The nice thing is it is modular so you can run 2 trays or 8, doesn't matter to the unit. Fruit rollup trays are also dirt cheap for it. I've only tried a couple of times (though i should more often, as they are awesome). I think the reviews for it speak volumes. 255 reviews, all but 8 are 4-5 star.

EDIT: Sorry, I missed you already bought the Excalibur. I thought you were still shopping.
 
   / Excalibur Dehydrator #5  
Those look like good units both the excalliber and the SS one.
 
   / Excalibur Dehydrator
  • Thread Starter
#6  
I bought the wife one of these Food Dehydrator - STAINLESS STEEL 10 TRAY DEHYDRATOR & she is pleased with it. I seems like a quality product to me.

How heavy is the unit? Can it be easily moved?

The Excalibur is bulky, not really heavy but it takes care moving. I can do it but I think my wifey would have problems. I wish it was SS but not if it added weight.

On the other hand, the unit in the link does have SS, has 10 trays vs 9, and the trays are slightly larger. Assuming both units are equal in quality, and I have not reason to doubt one or the other, to me it would get down to how easy is it to move the unit since we are moving ours around the house. Also is there room to store the unit which is a concern with ours by the way. The extra tray and larger tray size is nice since it is more food processed at one time...

Later,
Dan
 
   / Excalibur Dehydrator #7  
It weighs 29lbs. While the wife can put it up on the counter top, I usually do it for her.
 
   / Excalibur Dehydrator #8  
We have an old Excalibur and the sides have warped and the trays fall down unless you are careful. I will say it is one we got from my mom and it might have been on the May Flower, but it still works well, wish it were bigger. Ed
 
 
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