Polyscience 7306 Review
It’s been two weeks since I tested the Polyscience 7306 Immersion circulator and even though I wanted to share the experience with you, I’ve been quite busy at work which made me quite tired and lazy at home.
Review #2 – 7306 by Polyscience -
I’ve been cooking sous vide for some times now, mainly with the Swid, the immersion circulator by Addelice. I’ve been very happy with it and had great results. Nevertheless in the back of my mind was the image of the 7306 by polyscience. The one, the only. The circulator used by all the great chefs, the machine you see everywhere on TV, from Iron Chef America to Top Chef, when somebody decide to cook something sous vide, they pull out their Polyscience model.
I wanted it so bad. If I had to cook sous vide, I wanted the professional tool. Never mind the price and the size. I needed it. I was ready to shell out the big bucks and spend the rest of the month eating potatoes, sous vide of course. But then came along “Cuisine Technology and Concepts” (CTC), The UK distributor of Polyscience’s Smoking gun, Anti griddle and, guess what; Immersion circulator. They kindly accepted to let me try out the 7306 in the comfort of my own home. That was a great news, at last I was to get my hand on the holly grail of sous vide cookery.
The first thing you notice is that the 7306 is not as slick as the SWID, it is more industrial looking and sturdier. Size-wise, it’s pretty much the same, a bit longer though, which is actually an advantage as you can use a lower amount of water, very useful to deal with water evaporation. I had plan to test out the beast. I would first start with the duck confit, then a 48 hours brisket and a 24 hours lamb shoulder, but first, I had to understand how it worked. It was given to me without a manual so I had to figure out myself how to get it running. It was quite simple I have to say.
First, attach the machine to a container of your choice. I used a 20 litters Polycarbonate hotel pan. The attachment hook is something, it is big and steady. the screw is finished by a plastic pad to avoid scratching the surface of the container. Then turning on the circulator, like the SWID, the 7306 has a central on/off switch at the back of the body and also an power button at the front. Once turned on, the last set temperature appears on the digital screen. If you leave it as is, 15 second later it will revert to the actual temperature of the water in the bath and will heat it until it reaches the pre-set temp. The pre-set temp was too low for my duck so I turned the wheel next to the screen to the 75°C that I needed. This wheel is great, you can be extremely precise and at the same time very fast, it’s better than a simple button that you have to keep pressing. Anyway. When you happy with the temp, you press the wheel button down and the circulator starts heating the water. On the bottom right of the body an icon representing heat waves blinks telling you that the water is heating up. I started with water at 29°C which is very cold, usually I used the hot water from my tap which is around 50°C. I wanted to see how long it would take the machine to heat up the water to 75°C. I have to admit that it was a bit slower than the SWID. But not much.
There’s a couple of features worth mentioning on the 7306. on the front panel there is 3 buttons, P1, P2, P3. these are preset buttons. You can choose a temperature for fish, for meat and for vegetables and record them in each of these buttons, next time you cook fish just click on the appropriate button and voila. It’s a very useful feature for restaurant, where they cook the same food over and over again, they don’t have to think about the temp. they can label each buttons. On the bottom left of the front panel, you’ll find a small temperature selector going from 40°C to 200°C, this is a safety feature, allowing you to set a maximum temperature, which, if reached will stop the machine, it is just a fail safe in case of overheating, which is nice and reassuring given the fact that you’ll have to leave the machine unattended when cooking food for 2 or 3 days. A good idea is to set it at 100°C.
You can set the temperature of the circulator either in degrees centigrade or Fahrenheit, pressing P2 or P3 while powering on the machine will switch from one to the other. Another interesting feature that makes the 7306 a ideal tool for the professional kitchen is the ability to lock the set temperature so nobody can change it by accident. You set the temp, then you press and hold the selector for a couple of seconds and the lock is on, to unlock press and hold the temperature selector again and the lock is disabled. I can see this being very useful in a very busy kitchen.
Last but in any way the least is the pump speed control. Next to the on/off switch at the back of the machine, you’ll find the pump speed control. You can choose between high and low. When I turned on the machine the pump was set to low and it was very comparable to the pump of the SWID. I then remembered a video of Philip Preston where he was saying that for sous vide cooking you would use the pump on high. So I did. The pump is very powerful whereas before you had a gentle rippling at the surface of the water, on high the water looked like it was boiling, you understant at that moment why it is called a circulator.
This is it for the features, what was missing? A timer. The 7306 doesn’t have an integrated timer, when cooking fish or meat that don’t require long cooking you’ll have to set an external timer. At first I though that it was a bit of the shame and that they should think about adding one on the next generation of circulators, but then, when you think about it, even though sous vide is precision cooking when it comes to temperature, it’s not really the case when it comes to times. Mostly you need to know the minimum time something has to cook and then again only for short cooking food, ie chicken breast or fillet steak etc… Internal temperature is more important especially in the restaurant environment where they would probe their food to make sure that they are safe to eat. So, no. It’s not a big deal, but it wouldn’t hurt to have one either.
Given the fact that the 7306 is a piece of lab equipment, I wasn’t too concerned about precision of temperature control and reliability, but I had to put it through the same tests I used with the SWID. I used a couple of digital thermometers and a thermocouple to check on the temp. I set the two digital thermometers to kick off if the temp was lowering or raising. During the 24 hours of cooking the lamb, the temp changed only twice, the first time when I placed the pouch in the water bath and the second time when I removed it, which is completely normal, other than that, it’s extremely stable.
The 7306 is also very quiet, I wasn’t expecting that when I first saw it for the first time. When the pump is on high, it’s a bit louder, but not noisy, more like a reassuring hum, that tells you that everything is alright and the food is cooking. Reassuring is the key word with the 7306. It’s how you feel with it, I found myself – and maybe wrongly – very confident with it. I didn’t have problem leaving the machine running unattended while I was at work.
Pros Very sturdy Loads of features professional grade silent good sizeCons Price (could be cheaper)
Timer? protection grid sold separatelly
Conclusion.
If Philip Preston is reading this, just know that I want one for myself. I fell in love with it in the short time I spent using it and I miss it since I had to give it back. Would I recommend the 7306? For the home cook, if you can afford it, go for it, you wouldn’t regret it, for the proffesional kitchen. It’s a must if you’re serious in offering your customer sous vide food. I’m not going to go into the technical details of the immersion circulator. You’ll find all the important information there.
check this video of Philip Preston demonstrating the 7306.
English
French
Hi Casqu8,
Finally you did it!
Regarding your review of the polyscience 7360 I am a bit skeptical.
What justify the price difference of EUR 500 compared to a swid. I can’t see it from review.
Jean-François
I agree, that’s why I put the price as a “cons” I think that the justification will be more obvious on the long term usage. What I can say is that when using the unit, it feels like it’s worth every penny. More realistically it has more features than the SWID. preset buttons, two speed pump, setable temperature fail safe, local lock out mode, etc… It heats to a higher maximum temperature and has a greater precision. Don’t get me wrong it is expensive and I wish they’d lower the price. But I honestly fell in Love with it. I like to think of it as “la force tranquille” if you could get hold of one and try it out, I’m sure you’ll feel the same. Still love the SWID though.
N.
Hi Casquette – yes I am reading this!
I am very happy to hear you liked the 7306! I did consider a timer but since they are really inexpensive and that adding the user interface to the circulator made it look too complex, we decided not to.
We have some exciting things planned so hold on to your hat!
It’s all about time and temperature.
Philip
Hi Philip, is good to hear from you. As I have said in the article I didn’t find the lack of timer that problematic as temperature was more important than time. Maybe
an integrated thermocouple and probe, like the Julabo would be interested. “Exciting new things” ? Can’t wait.
Nicolas
Hi Casquette,
I have several issues with thermocouple probes. First inherent accuracy of a TC is plus or minus 2C. Our platinum sensors are plus or minus 0.25C accuracy between -50 – 200C. I also have problems with probing product (except for recipe development) for two reasons. First is the risk of a “shared needle” moving bacteria to the usually safe core of a product. Secondly I have done testing with all of the foam tape materials out there and they leak more than people think. I put a white towel around a sponge then bagged it with a chunk of metal so it would sink. I carefully taped and probed the sponge in the well sealed bag. I then dropped it in a bath that I had added a bottle of blue food color. After a one hour cook I opened the bag and found a blue towel. The sponge is a harsh test but very telling.
Cheers
Philip
I am surprised by your comment. IMO sous vide is all about temperature AND time. I can perfectly understand time is not an issue in a lab but in a kitchen an immersion circulator should always have a timer.
The argument about complexity for the user is nonsense.
Alan
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Hello Nicolas,
thank you very much for your informative posts.
I just wanted to comment on some of the above mentioned points.
The temperature and time setting of the Swid is locked, too, while in operation.
The Swid has been designed for Sous-Vide cooking with water only and temperatures above 90ºC are therefore irrelevant. An additional control for the max. temperature just adds unnecessary complexity to the machine in our opinion. Furthermore, you won’t even be able to turn on the Swid if it is not attached to a properly filled waterbath thanks to its low water level protection.
The pump of the Swid with a flow capacity of 5L/min is definitely strong enough to ensure a very even temperature distribution in a 20L bath.
Best regards,
Thorsten
Hi Thorsten,
First, I wanted to make clear that I’m not doing comparative tests, as in this product is better that this one. I think that all of you guys deserve credit for bringing to us cooks fantastic tools for the kitchen and as in all disciplines, It’s true in Visual Effects – my real job – and it’s true in the kitchen. Different tools are better in different situations than others. I want people to know about the different options to make their own choice. If I was rich I would buy them all.
I’m sorry I wasn’t clear enough, indeed the SWID is in lock mode as well, I think that being able to turn it on or off would be a good feature. It happened that I had the wrong temperature set on the cirulator or time on the timer and wanted to change it after realizing my mistake. In that case you have to turn the unit off and back on to reset it. For the pump I agree that the SWID has a good enough pump for the recommended container size. Sometime you wish that the minimum water level was a bit lower that it is at the moment. I had a couple of experience where the circulator turned off during the night because of water evaporation.
That said the SWID is a great piece of equipment.
ps: A lot of chefs are using their circulators with water baths but also with oil baths and I read about clarified butter bath. Can the Swid be used with these mediums?
ps2: Not sure if you know but the SWID is featured in the last Thuriès Gastronomie Magasine. Damien Thuriès uses it to cook a Coquelet farci aux marrons, truffe et foie gras de cannard.
Nicolas
Casqu8,
The swid manual indicates you should only use water with the swid.
I don’t get the interest of using an immersion circulator with oil or butter?? Then you are not talking about sous vide anymore…
Jean-françois
You’re right, it’s not sous vide anymore, it’s low temperature cooking. You can confit fish and meat for instance. being able to control the temperature of other medium than water is a plus in certain kitchens.
I wasn’t to try anyway, the cleaning up would be a nightmare
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I am thinking of buying one of these units, but a bit concerned about the evaporation problem with longer cooking hours, how did you combat it with the long time cooking?