More vacuum sealing tips


dalepres
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I have some more tips on vacuum packing that I'm excited about.

We bought a VS-280 vacuum sealer from Sorbent Systems. This is not an ad for them; I have no association from them other than having ordered from them twice now. This vacuum sealer is also available from quite a few other places. What is cool about it is that you can vacuum Mylar bags or other non-channel bags. It has a nozzle that penetrates the bag opening during vacuuming and retracts during heat sealing. This means it doesn't need the special bags that Seal-A-Meal or Food Saver type sealers require.

This sealer is about 100 dollars. There doesn't seem to be a mid-grade or budget high-grade sealer in this category. The next lowest-price nozzle vacuum sealer seems to be in the 2000 dollar range. Bags for this sealer cost about 10 cents or so each instead of 40 cents or so. The down-side is that it is trickier to use. My wife threw her arms up in frustration with it but I was able to use it without any trouble after a few failed attempts.

Besides the savings, which may or may not be worth the extra effort, I like it mostly because I can vacuum seal Mylar bags. This gives me a stronger storage container with better barrier specifications and light blocking as well.

Another new tool that we bought for vacuum packing is an 18-inch table top impulse sealer. This is the type about 100 dollars - not the really fancy ones. It is amazingly fast. It seals the Food Saver bags as well as the Mylar bags - but no vacuum. What I used it for today was to quickly turn a bunch of over-sized 8" x 16" Mylar bags at 35 cents each into two perfectly sized 4" x 16" bags for spaghetti at about 18 cents each. These bags are heavy enough that we didn't have to use the spaghetti boots that I described using with the Food Saver bags in another thread. This sealer is great because it has an effective 100% duty cycle - at least for us. We can seal as fast as we can prepare bags to onto the sealer. Your mileage may vary :). Using the specialized sealer for bag making/resizing work saves the duty-cycle-limited vacuum sealers for doing vacuum work. This greatly increased our production rate when sealing rice and pastas.

I think that the rice and pastas packed this way with a thrown in 100cc oxygen absorber will last for the rest of our lifetimes.

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In the bottom pack, you can see the outline of the boot that we made from Food Saver bag and put over the ends of the spaghetti to protect the bag. On the top pack there's no boot which allows the spaghetti to pack more flatly but runs a higher risk of bag failure due to the ends of the spaghetti poking through. In both packs, you can see the outline of the oxygen absorber.

I just can't figure out why spaghetti in the store isn't packed like this. Consider all of the gasses, fumes, vapors, etc. that are in the air and yet pasta often comes in unsealed boxes. It sure would be nice to be able to buy it this way at the store.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I posted this on another forum. I thought it might be of interest here, as well:

Here are some samples of the vacuum packed Mylar bags I have been doing:

First, vacuum packed spaghetti in 3.5 mil bags. These aren't good for really long-term storage but will extend the 2 year shelf life to 5+ years. We had to form boots from scrap bag material to go over the ends of the spaghetti to keep from poking holes in the bag. You can see the outline of the boots.

(Had to drop this image to fit the 8 image max - but it's the same as the first post in this thread anyway.)

Spaghetti in 7 mil bags. These bags are thick! No worry about poking through at all. Because of the weight of the material, they don't suck up like the thinner bags but they are very well vacuumed as well. All also have 100cc of oxygen absorbers. This spaghetti should be as good in 30 years as it was the day we packed it.

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Here's some playing cards we sealed. We also have coloring/activity books and crayons. You gotta have fun, after all. We used oxygen absorbers and desiccants on opposite sides of the package.

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This one is egg noodles. This we didn't vacuum. Instead it is just sealed with the impulse sealer but includes 200cc of oxygen absorbers. This creates a 22% vacuum in the bag by eliminating the oxygen without crushing the contents.

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Rice packed in a 4.5 mil bag. These are medium weight but still very strong. By flattening the rice with my palm before packing the packs are flat and stack well. We also added 100cc of oxygen absorber. These packs are as hard as bricks - as long as the vacuum holds up.

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Elbow macaroni. See how tightly it is packed? You can see the outline of the noodles. Because of the dead space in macaroni compared to spaghetti, we added 200cc of oxygen absorbers. These packages are rock hard and very light. We've used 5 year old vacuum packed macaroni. It was as good as new.

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Dried vegetables. We bought frozen vegetables at the grocery store and dried them. Much cheaper than buying canned dehydrated. There's probably 4 lbs of frozen vegetables in this bag which, as you can tell in the pictures, contains much less volume than 4 cups of rice.

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Our three vacuum machines. In front is the Seal-A-Meal. In back is the retracting nozzle vacuum sealer that works for Mylar and other non-channel bags. On the right is the Reynolds battery powered unit.

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This is the best 100 dollars we have spent for doing vacuum packing. How many times do you want to shape a bag to make it smaller or to use rolls for the Seal-a-Meal? Since those sealer strips get so hot, you have to wait 30 seconds between seals and then after 10 or so you have to wait 10 minutes or more. Otherwise you burn up the sealer or at least burn up your bags. This unit is an impulse sealer. It gets hot instantly and cools off virtually just as fast. You can make or form bags as fast as you can feed them and do it all day long. That leaves the precious duty-cycle limited vacuum sealers to do what they do best: vacuum seal, without slowing them down by using them for non-vacuum tasks.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

These gadgets look very interesting. But I've seen one that is like a clip you hold in one hand. You can reach down into the bucket and then squeeze the handles of the clip over the edge of the bag.

I'm thinking that if I put two bags of grain in one 5-gallon bucket I could do it this way:

Put the first bag in and push it down so it fills the space out pretty well. Take the sealer in my hand and reach down into the bucket to seal the outside edges of the bag. Then I'd squeeze the remaining air out of the mylar bag and seal the middle edge.

Then I could do the second bag the same way. My hope is that this would help me better fill the space inside the bucket, while still using two different bags.

The only problem is that I don't know what this gadget is called or where to get it.

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Just a quick tip for all who might borrow a sealer. They do wear out. The heating element and the Teflon tape have to be replaced from time to time. If you borrow or use someone else's sealer and use it a lot, consider making a donation of the wearable parts or the cost of the wearable parts. I know we all want to be good neighbors. :)

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No, that's about 75 dollars. If that's what you meant, I misunderstood. Using the one shown there is a good idea. SorbentSystems.com sells those, too. Along with about a couple hundred other places.

Watch out for those videos, though. That guy gives a LOT of bad advice, I think.

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On the oxygen absorbers...

If I make beef jerkey at home, should I use more than 1 oxygen absorber? It just seems to me that if 1 is good, 2 or 3 would better.

Also, I've borrowed your great idea on drying the frozen vegetables. I've had the dehydrator running nearly non-stop for about a week. I've been putting the dried veges into ziplock bags keeping them in the freezer until I have enough of each type to give them one final dry, then seal them up. My question is, how do I know when they are dry enough? And, because I don't trust myself with this yet, should I put more than 1 absorber in each bag?

By the way, if you like okra, it dries very well and is a tasty, crunchy snack. I was surprised!!

Thanks for the tips.

donavistaboy

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The atmosphere contains 20.5% oxygen. You should use a single oxygen absorber in your jerky that is sized to absorb 20.5% of the total air in your package. Beyond that, there is no advantage to additional oxygen absorbing capacity in your situation.

There is a technical advantage to a small amount of overkill when it comes to absorbers.

All plastic based containers pass a small amount of oxygen through the walls of the container - whether that container is a bucket, a Mylar bag, other vacuum bag, or a ziploc bag. They all have different rates of oxygen transmission with, of those listed, Mylar having the least transmission by at least a couple hundred times.

A small amount of excess absorber capacity will help reduce the oxygen that passes through the container that way. In all most all cases, if you are using fresh absorbers and handling them according to the instructions, your oxygen absorbers will have enough excess capacity over and above their rating to handle this issue.

So, especially in the case of jerky, because of the very short life span, even with oxygen absorbers, there is absolutely zero benefit to adding additional absorbers.

As for the vegetables, go to sorbensystems.com and read their pages on sizing oxygen absorbers. That will tell you what you need for your vegetables. It depends on the size of package and the capacity and freshness of the absorber.

I'm glad the tip about the frozen vegetables was useful. I've dried vegetables very dry. I don't know what percentage that is; just very dry. And they reconstituted for soup just fine. For fruits, fresh or frozen, I dry them to a leathery consistency so they're enjoyable eaten dry.

Hope this helps.

Dale

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  • 6 months later...

These are some great tips! I'm glad I came across this site. I personally like to use a chamber style vacuum sealer with inert gas replacement. I have been able to dramatically extend the shelf life of my food.

The chamber sealers are a little more expensive though, so I can understand why a lot of you use the external-style sealers. Aren't the great! :D

I have had a lot of luck with MiniPack. They have chamber and external sealers. I got mine from OfficeZone. It looks like they are out of Utah.

Office Zone Vacuum Sealers

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Customer service has been great. I know not everyone LDS is from Utah, but I have always enjoyed my contact with Utahns (being a Washingtonian). :)

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Klippers: I went to the web site posted, but didn't see where the unit you mentioned and pictured in your post has the ability to replace air with an inert gas.

I purge some bags of product with CO2, but I didn't see a nipple or connector for running in Nitrogen or CO3 or other inert gas after vacuuming.

I can afford up to 1500 bucks for one of these, since I do a large amount of vacuuming, and the bulk capacities of one of the larger table-top models would be great.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

These are great posts. Thanks for taking the time on them. I am doing the same thing.

I just left a post saying basically the same thing. As I stated there, I am also adding a bit of diatomaceous earth. Food Grade only. For added protection from the little bobs that may have been in the beans or whatever. Just a note for the frugal minded people. Check the flea markets or yard sales for sealers. I find them all the time. But I do want to save up for one of those nice ones you are talking about. I do have one question. Do you just guess at the amount of oxygen absorbers? I saw an attempt at a calculation but it was so difficult to understand I just gave it up.

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