Terry - Do you think 15 cu ft. is about right for most folks? I need one too but I'm not sure how big. I don't want to go overboard and get anything too big but it'll defeat the purpose if I go too small. If I'm lucky I may have one deer and one hog in a year plus some fish now and then and a few other things. [I recently learned the hard way that I need a freezer. I lost about 60 lbs of excellent pork from my son's hog he shot back in June. I was keeping it in the top freezer of a spare refrigerator and somehow the freezer door was ajar. For about 4 days. "What's that smell?"
] Anyway, roughly how many pounds of meat do you think a 15 cu ft freezer would hold? Thanks!
Wave
Wave, I use a 15 cu ft chest type also. I find that smaller doesn't leave me enough room for fish and seafood, and no room to spare for those "good hunting" years, and also the 15 seems easier to keep meat in rotation and not let the older stuff get buried at the bottom and forgotten about until they aren't worth keeping.
A 15 will hold a couple hundred pounds of meat if it's packaged, 6 whole hams in bags in the bottom of it won't even hardly put a dent in the capacity.
We usually don't double wrap in paper, we use the good quality ziploc freezer bags, but the important part is to pack those so they don't get banged around too much, once meat is frozen in them, all you gotta do is bump them together and it puts holes in the bag and you got freezer burn.
Venison is one of the only red meats that doesn't hurt it to thaw and refreeze it. I have frozen whole hams then thawed and cut them up, repackaged and refrozen and never had a problem with it. A good chest freezer will keep venison good for up to 3yrs as long as it never warms up, I know this for a fact because some went that long in mine and once the tiny bit of freezer burn was cut off, you would have never known.
The two best chest freezers I have owned were both old used models that served well beyond their years, I'd be scared of buying a new China made freezer. They may be fine for all I know, time will tell but it wouldn't surprise me a bit to see the old good ones outliving them 10 to 1.
