Beusho

Yea, keep it simple! I like the design now, the unit brings up to temperature, holds it there and circulates water. This is all most people need, I think over designing and extraneous features would either lead to price increases or unneeded complexity.

Can you calibrate this unit to a temperature if the software/thermometer goes off?

Yes, you calibrate it to some standard (in this case a thermometer). And yes, this should fix any inaccuracy

No, they've pushed the anticipated ship date to sometime in the Fall. The Anova looks good but I haven't seen any reviews for it yet. There's also another Kickstarter campaign for a new circulator called Sansaire http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/seattlefoodgeek/sansaire-sous-vide-circulator-for-199?ref=live that might be worth a look, if you don't mind the risk of buying a product that doesn't exist yet. I have a review for the Anova in the Anova thread

@rotuts Yes, why do you want less flow? or variable flow? I see you can do this for the polyscience ones, why would you want a slow flow rate?

Food saver and ziploc both have these: they're basically sous vide bags with a zip top (food savers seems sturdier to me). I prefer these to the vacuum heat sealer Food Saver (FS) for SV, for freezer or long term storage I use the bigger vacuum heat sealed FS. The bags have a port on them to apply a vacuum to, Ziploc has a manual pump and FS has a smaller 20$ battery pump, they're both at Target last time I checked. That Oliso is an overpriced version of these two. I would recommend getting the larger gallon freezer bags for liquids.

You will probably have duct tape floating in your bath or worse yet jamming your pump and ruining the machine. You can vector the pump so it hits the closest wall, even the wall the circulator is mounted on, and that would reduce the how much power the rest of the bath sees if that's what you want to do.

Stability is read as +/- .01C in the manual, I've had mine and test it with a NSF thermometer and it has been right where the readout says, the readout is in .1C but can be changed to F. I should also mention the customer service is spectacular, I called Anova and immediately talked to a human being when I had questions, this is a big factor for me when I purchase more expensive items: is a real human being going to talk to me, this lets me know that if I ever have problems I would have support

I can't imagine Anova cares about Nomiku, Nomiku costs $349, still hasn't shipped and has the separate power box which is kind of odd. The only other one in the price range is Sansaire which costs the same ($199), but it's a kickstarter so who knows if it will actually ship on time or pass all the certifications. Also the Sansaire is plastic and has no vectoring pump, compare this to stainless steel and a vectoring pump as well as a having a history making immersion circulators I would prefer Anova.

For those wondering about the clearance: here is a pic attached to my cooler, it's got plenty of room to go. The one thing I took for granted with this is the vectoring of the pump that Jeff mentioned. I put 4 steaks in my small cooler yesterday and was able to vector the pump to make sure the heat was distributed evenly by shooting it directly at the steaks, I could also angle it along the side so it came around behind the steaks and created a little mini whirlpool. The vectoring is awesome for when I think I may be overcrowding. From what I've seen of the other SV machines they just have a stirring shaft that moves the water directly around the unit, like putting a very tiny fan in the bath.

@rotuts: Yep, that's a coleman 16 personal I've had for years, the Anova moves the water around in there. It's rated for about 1.5 gallons more than that and I didn't even fill it up all the way. My next plan is a a small wire rack so I can suspend the bags with clothes line clips, also found a resource for cheap polypropylene balls @bonkboo: This was my first buy too. I can only say that they've been making lab equipment for a while, which is the main reason I decided to buy it. I hesitated on the first wave of sidekic/dorkfood/random PID controller that came through, and now I'm glad I did. I think the only other viable options for SV are Sansaire and Nomiku. They're both by new groups that are one or two people, Scott (the guy behind Sansaire) has sous vide experience given he's on the MC team. I don't know if this will translate into a product that's any better or more consistent. I know the other one, Nomiku, still hasn't shipped and has been getting delayed. I like to see all this SV device flourishing, I wonder when Polyscience will come out with it's $149 circulator, I can't imagine anyone paying 500 or 900 dollars anymore

Well, I got an Anova. Here's my review and specs: Heater: 1000 W Pump: 12 L/min Input Power: 115-120V Control is touchscreen which I really liked, no knobs or moving parts. Body is stainless steel which is awesome, you could drop this on the floor and it would survive. The attachment is a screw clamp so parts aren't easily broken, I can hook it onto coolers or pots and it's very secure. Bottom heater guard can be taken off for cleaning. Performance: brought 70F to 133F in about 15 minutes. It kept it there pretty much exactly for an 18hour flank steak that was delicious, the wire didn't get hot which is what the serious eats review mentioned about sansaire. Customer service: Great, I asked for a tracking number for the shipment and they gave it very quickly. Good response Overall: The best and most affordable SV immersion circulator on the market I think. I was going to buy a second one and was debating between sansaire and anova and I think the anova is going to win out. The fact that the company has been making lab grade immersion circulators and has some history in the industry is encouraging given that other kickstarter SV have either delayed or had to make odd modifications. Jeff, the Anova engineer who commented above, put it best 'shrunk down version of a lab circulator.' I also prefer the stainless steel to the plastic housing, if it every drops it won't bust in two.

Edit: no they're not, it's still $199, the same price as the anova. Lower prices are bound to happen. Look how much it cost Scott to do the original: $75. That was RETAIL priced, didn't include labor but had multiple heating elements. I can't imagine what it costs to make one of these in China. It's probably mostly the know-how of getting a good manufacturer, supplies, tooling and passing tests. A lot of up front costs (hence kickstarter). My parents still have the first model microwave, about 3x the size and 5x the weight of ones currently. They said it was a couple hundred dollars when it first came out, they bought it used.

http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=23942 This is a good source for them The density of solid polypropylene is around .85 g/cm^3 which is below water so they will submerge much better than ping pong balls

It cuts the surface area over which evaporation can occur, a lid does the same thing, with a negligble loss between the water surface and the lid. The area between a cut out and lid is free for evaporation to occur through, ping pong balls might actually be a better seal. I worked in medicine and all our labs used ping pong balls so people could retrieve things from tanks (we actually used polyscience circulators). In reality I think it's only practical: no lid to take off, take up counter space and drip everywhere; I can't imagine the evaporation has that much effect, although I only ordered my first profesionally made sous vide cooker last week. Polypropylene is temperature rated for up to 180F I think, no ping pong ball is polypropylene unless you order them that way. That being said the polyscience price is way too high, you can probably check on amazon or a plastics manufacturer to get a 100 for $10-15. I actually think the best kind would be a one with a ring or sacer like shape.

Why ping pong balls instead of cling wrap: for ease of use in terms of adding/replacing things during cooking (this would apply for example if cooking different vegetables or vegetables of varying thickness), as well as just being able to pull things out quickly if you're in a fast paced kitchen

Question about using ping pong balls for a cover: anybody use those expensive polyscience ones? Are they just polypropylene, is there an advantage to this rather than using regular ping pong balls? Are they just 100% polypropylene? Thanks for any help!

I just completed a broccoli roast from a Cook's Illustrated recipe, pretty simple: salt, sugar, olive oil, put on hot pan from 500F oven, roast for 10 min. I was surprised, I wasn't expecting much given that broccoli doesn't have complex flavors but there were subtle caramelized flavors which CI said was from the sugar. Knowing the maillard reaction is basically protein+sugar+heat=caramelization has anyone ever tried making a protein+sugar solution for roasting vegetables? I've heard of the glucose solution brushed on steak but my experience with that was that it didn't do so much. Questions I had were: 1. Glucose vs. Table sugar. Does the glucose do a better job? 2. What protein? Whey, some other thing? 3. Does it work?

I just completed this at home as well and can second the deep umami flavor it develops. I did mine for 2 days although they recommend 3 (on the MC website, not sure about the book). I would highly recommend this.

The Anova circulator is available...looks like a great (cheaper) alternative to the polyscience. If anyone has tried this I know I would appreciate a review and I'm sure many others would as well http://www.sousvides.com/

I don't have an ice machine on my refrigerator and I don't want to put my blender through the work of making crushed ice so I thought about buying plastic ice cube trays that have mini ice cubes in them from bed bath and beyond. Anybody have any experience with these things? Are they any good and were there any problems?

My grater has given up the ghost after a frozen bread grating experiment. I've narrowed my selection down to two: The rosle medium grater and the microplane elite They are both one single plane (not a box) which is what I like for grating over food/bowls. They are both coarse. The biggest differences are Microplane: etched stainless steel, smaller, cheaper Rosle: Stamped stainless stell, larger, more expensive I like the large size, and stamped stainless generally handles potatoes better on the Rosle. The microplane is much cheaper though, I could get both a coarse grater and an additional one for the same price as the Rosle. So my question to those who've tried microplane's plane graters, the larger surface area ones, not the small rasp graters. How are they? Do they grate well and comfortably? Does the grating surface bend under a potato or other root vegetables? Are these new larger graters the way microplane is heading, they seem to do the job of the skinny rasp grater but more comfortably

Why is there a preference for a ceramic mandoline?

The reviews on here are interesting. Cook's Illustrated, a trusted source for me, this year gave high recommendations for the Fagor Duo and the Vitaquick, and interestingly gave the lowest review to WMF perfect and wasn't positive about Kuhn Rikon. Mostly it was vessel diameter (smaller diameter more scorching, knocking on Kuhn) and maintaing a consistent temp, suprisingly only the vitaquick could reach 250 and hold it with Fagor Duo coming in a hair below with many of the others not reaching it and some having large fluctuations. Given this I sprung for the Fagor Duo this week. My question for those who have the Duo, what's the white powder on the gasket?

True, but I think their business looks good. If the polyscience and the nomiku both had problems I would bet the nomiku people would fix/replace the unit more easily. I say that because they seem passionate about making sous vide devices and in general small business depend more on customer loyalty.