cambium

Recipes 

I recently purchased a sealer for preserving leaf hops. All went well and the the crop went to the freezer. Two weeks later, one-third of the packages have lost their seal. Has anyone had experience with this? Are the oils from the hops causing the seal to eventually break?

iaefebs

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What type of bags did you use?

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cambium

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I used up the ones that came with the unit as well as Food Saver heat and seal bags

iaefebs

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Is your sealer a Food Saver? According to Food Saver, the heat and seal bags are made of the same material as the regular bags, so that shouldn't be a problem. I've never had a problem with storing hops in them, so that shouldn't be the problem. As long as you don't have any fold lines where the seal area is I don't know why your bags failed. May want to post a picture of some of the failed bags. From The Food Saver web site.

Our FoodSaver® Bags and Rolls are designed for FoodSaver® units only. The sealing bar on your unit may either be too hot, which will melt the bags, or too cool, which will result in a bag that is not sealed properly.

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B-Hoppy

Recipes 

Sometimes they just don't seal right. You can just use up those that leak first or cut and reseal. I've found bags that apparently had slow leaks and those hops were still fine up to a year later. Reseal if you're concerned.

FuzzeWuzze

Recipes 

Also make sure you have plenty of space to seal, as many are im sure i was stingy on my bag length...one bag in particular actually had a few hop leaves stuck in the seal...over a few days it let the vacuum out....had to put it into a larger bag.

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lotbfan

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I let all of mine sit on a table for a couple of hours, and 5 or 6 lost pressure and re-inflated. It was simple enough at that point to cut them open and reseal them, waiting again to make sure the seal was good. You might try a version of that method next time.

weirdboy

Recipes 

I don't have a food saver brand, but one thing I do when I seal my hops is make a seal, then pull the bag back maybe a quarter of an inch and make a second seal right next to it in parallel. I have never had one lose vacuum in 4+ years.

Hammy71

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I got to start doing this....good idea. I've also discovered the the temperature you store the bags pre-use is also important. I use to leave my Food Saver unit and the bags in my garage. I noticed bags were not sealing and assumed it was the unit. Purchased some new bags as an experiment and the thing works fine again. I'm assuming that keeping the bags in the garage, (where temperatures get really high in the summer), must have partially activated the sealing part of the bags or something. Since I've moved the operation in doors...no issues.

AndrewD

Recipes 

I don't use mine for hops, but this is what I do with anything of value that I know might be in the freezer for a long time. When I first started doing this, I was actually doing three seals, but I have not had a failure with double-sealing. Just remember to double seal both ends of the bag. Also, the sealing element really likes you if you don't overheat it, so give it some time with the lid open between bags. My friend damaged his expensive Cabela's vacsealer by doing to many seals in quick succession.