Well I did my first long cook SV this weekend and ate the dish last night. Was extremely disappointed with results. I'm sure some of it is down to my technique. I have an old polyscience IC (got a few months ago on ebay for a few hundred $) and 8" deep acrylic full size hotel pan with lid. (I cut the lid to fit around the SV heater and used a Extech thermometer to monitor water temperature (as Poly has analogue scale and wasn't sure about accuracy/stability). Never varied by even 0.1C in 3 days. I cooked short ribs at 55.4C (131.8F) for about 76 hours, followed by a few minutes per side in hot skillet. (Originally planned them to be on for about 48 hours, but dinner plans changed on Sunday). All I used was S&P and a bit of garlic salt. Colour was fantastic: perfect medium rare and texture was pretty good (when I could find meat). The taste and smell however were somewhat odd/unpleasant. After starting cooking, I read about 40-50 pages of this thread and realized I should have probably taken all of the fat off. I've seen other people mention an off taste with long cooking times. Can anyone offer any hints/tips on what I did wrong? It was very disappointing after such a long wait. Problem now is the WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) has reduced significantly :-(. My next dish (hopefully chicken curry tonight) better be spot on. Regards Mark