Upright or Chest Freezer?

[deestafford]

Sailor just had problems with his chest freezer going on the fluke.  I looking at having an outdoor cooking area done in the next few months and as part of it will be a separate refrigerator and separate freezer. 

I'll have a choice between a chest and an upright freezer and am leaning toward an upright but I thought I'd ask y'all for opinions of the advantages and disadvantages of each. 

Thanks, Dee

[TMB]

Upright....

Reason is chest style is hard to stack food where it can be reach easy and many times food will over looked till one day 5 years later you find it.

Then we see post like "Look what I found"  in the bottom of the freezer   

[teesquare]

It is about convenience vs efficiency. Cold "sinks" and warmer air rises - right?
A chest freezer will stay cooler longer in the event of a power outage, failure, etc, - but like Tommy said - stacking, and seeing what is in the bottom of them is a real pain....

One thing to consider - that I believe is even more important than the form factor you select: buy a commercial freezer. They do not auto defrost. Auto defrosting the the number #1 reason for freezer burned foods.

If you vacuum pack your foods - you can easily go 3 years between defrosting - and your foods will remain fresh.

[Pam Gould]

Outside kitchen with a freezer..heaven..congrats..I'm jealous, well not jealous..envious.  Pam .☆´¯`•.¸¸. ི♥ྀ.

[smokeasaurus]

go for the upright. Tommy is spot on about having a hidden brisket and not even knowing it is in there 

[muebe]

I say go with a chest freezer. As far as I know all chest freezers do not defrost. And even though it might be a bit more difficult to find stuff you can really load them up.

I am always amazed how much I can fit in mine.

And freezer finds at the bottom can be a unexpected surprise

[LostArrow]

I have both !
A upright for household items & a 9 cu ft.chest
In garage for wild game & bulky items.
I put butts , briskest , whole poultry etc. in chest,
Nothing to small.
We'll packaged items will keep 2-3 times as long in chest as upright for the reasons mentioned.

[Saber 4]

I have a chest freezer and use these deep baskets from container store to organize things by meat type and date vac sealed and since they stack up crosswise in the freezer it's easy to pick one up and see what's below and to be able to rotate stock by keeping the older baskets on top.

http://www.containerstore.com/shop/kitchen/refrigeratorFreezer?productId=10006650

[CANNON-MAN]

I have had both. And I agree that a chest freezer can be a problem. The latest chest freezer that we purchased had sectioned dividers that divided the chest into 8 vertical chambers. I found this so helpful that I built the same kind of dividers in my other chest freezer. I put all the wild game from each year in one or more of the chambers. vegetables in another and fruits in others. The chambers keep food from getting all mixed up. I can keep older meat separate from the newest game. You still have the lift out baskets for special things but the things under them stay separated.

[spuds]

I have a chest freezer and use these deep baskets from container store to organize things by meat type and date vac sealed and since they stack up crosswise in the freezer it's easy to pick one up and see what's below and to be able to rotate stock by keeping the older baskets on top.

http://www.containerstore.com/shop/kitchen/refrigeratorFreezer?productId=10006650

Just what we need,thanks!!

[IR2dum]

Upright....

Reason is chest style is hard to stack food where it can be reach easy and many times food will over looked till one day 5 years later you find it.

Then we see post like "Look what I found"  in the bottom of the freezer 

I have an upright and still have those "Look what I found" moments.

[Sailor1]

I think each has pros and cons.  Had an upright for many years and it was a manual defrost.  Easy to find stuff in the upright.  The chest freezer is a manual defrost and as member say it can be hard to find stuff.  I have baskets and I know what type of stuff is in each basket so it is not hard for me to find stuff.  The big plus for me is that a chest freezer will keep stuff cold a lot longer in a power outage.  It will not keep stuff frozen for 5 or 6 days and I can vouch for that  I also think you can get more stuff in a chest freezer than you can in an upright freezer even if they are the same cubic inches.  I think the chest freezer is cheaper to operate because you get more filled volume and less air space to keep cold.  I now turn you back to your regular scheduled program. 

[catinatree]

I've had both, have only an upright now, and really the key is which ever one you have it must be organized ! the chest even more so !!!!

[deestafford]

It appears that there is a common word which keeps appearing that may have me leaning toward the upright and that word is "organized". 
In my life I have been called many things...good and bad..but "organized" ain't one of them.  My thought process, such that it is, is organized but that's about the extent of my organizing.  I used  to put a 4x8 piece of plywood on the top of every desk I had in the Army for a desk top.  Standard tops were just tooooo small.

Dee

[tnjimbob]

We had a Kenmore upright for nearly 40 years. It had cooling tubes that ran through each wire shelf, and kept food for a long time, even through many power outages. It was not an auto-defrost model, and we had to defrost it about once a year or so. Earlier this year, it finally died. We went to get something out for dinner, and found it was nearly 25° inside. We defrosted it and gave it four hours to cool back down, but the temp never got below 50°, so we got a newer model upright. It has been excellent for the few months we have had it, and as a bonus it has a high temp alarm that sounds if the temp is over 20° for longer than a few minutes.

I prefer an upright, as my family had a huge chest freezer and I remember it being a pain in the butt to sort through identically sized butcher paper wrapped meats from a processing house, and I nearly fell in several times over the years. We also lost several things that got buried, and defrosting that beast was nearly impossible. Guess that's why we rarely did.