vacuum sealers? do you use them?

I am thinking about buying hops in larger quantity for me and a few other brewer friends and the topic of buying in bulk and separating into smaller amounts and resealing with a food saver like product and was hoping for some insight as to a good product if this is the right way to go?
This place is great! thanks for your help!

I love my foodsaver. I use it way more for brewing related things (mostly hops) than for cooking related things.

cheaper alternative:
buy this

and these

then, take regular sandwich bags, put your hops in the sadwich bags, leave the bags open... put the smaller bags in one of the gallon bags-- pump out the air.

works like a champ.

that said-- I dont buy hops by the pound and separate out an entire pound... I just use this to store my left overs (if I only use like 15 grams or something).

If you are going to be buying a ton of hops, you might want to invest in a food saver.

just thought Id present another option.

food savers are cool though .

I tried 3 different pump and seals and none of them reliably held a seal. I finally bit the bullet and bought a foodsaver and love it.

Food saver rocks! I used the cheaper alternative posted above, and it works ok, but the foodsaver is definitely better.

I bought a Food Saver on Craig's list for $10.00. Keep an eye out, or, put up a request.

I just bought one of the Ziplock pumps to use on some hops I recently purchased. Even though I know it is no where near as good as a Food Saver, it seems to do the job and at a fraction of the price. Until I can come across a Craig's List find or pony up to drop the loot on a Food Saver it will have to do.

SWMBO has two Food Savers. Love 'em. She buys them directly from foodsaver, usually over the phone and they offer her discounts! I package my hops in the foil bags they come in. Just open to get what I need then reseal or put into another bag then back into the freezer. Keeps hops about as fresh as you are going to get.

Don't go cheap, get a foodsaver. You will never regret it, they are awesome.

A review of sealers on America's Test Kitchen showed that the valves on the pump bags will leak over time, which I have since confirmed in my freezer with all the freezer burn on frozen fruits and meats that have only been in there a few months.

They said that the quality of the real sealers comes down to the thickness of the plastic preventing any migration of air into the package, and the quality of the vacuum sucking all the air out to begin with, so you really get what you pay for. A Food Saver home-type product seemed to be on the absolute minimum quality end of the real sealers they tested, and you could imagine the quality of a $1000+ commercial sealer.

That said, try a restaurant supply store, at least for the rolls of the thick plastic to go with a home-quality Food Saver.

Love the foodsaver! I buy about 10 pounds of hops after harvest and portion them up in foodsaver bags. It's paid for itself in just one year! Buying bulk hops is the way to go as markups at LHBS are outrageous.

wildwest450 said:

Don't go cheap, get a foodsaver. You will never regret it, they are awesome.

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+1. Foodsaver rocks and I use it for tons of stuff. I originally bought mine for the kitchen but it definitely comes in handy for hops.

I've use a Food Saver for a couple of years now to package my homegrown hops before putting them in the freezer. It works great, but the bag material is bit pricey. Look for big multiroll boxes on sale from time to time and you can cut the bag price in half. Seems to work good enough as long as you use the hops within a year. When you package them you can still get a faint smell of hops thru the bag though which means they are as good a the mylar foil oxygen barrier bags the hop pellets come in. Despite looking online several time I have yet to find a source for mylar foil oxygen barrier bag material that will work with a FoodSaver and the $1000+ for a comercial grade sealer just won't fly past the wife.

I got this food saver model as a gift, worked great for 2 years but not the vacuum is REALLY weak all of a sudden. So bad I need to take it apart to see why or toss it.

http://www.foodsaver.com/Product.aspx?id=c&cid=87&pid=8326

jgln said:

I got this food saver model as a gift, worked great for 2 years but not the vacuum is REALLY weak all of a sudden. So bad I need to take it apart to see why or toss it.

http://www.foodsaver.com/Product.aspx?id=c&cid=87&pid=8326

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Is it possible something got sucked in and is blocking the port between the pump and the little 'chamber'?

Use a vacuum sealer of your choice and put your hops in mason jars. You'll need to buy the mason jar attachment but this works awesome and you don't have to mess with bags.

SpanishCastleAle said:

Is it possible something got sucked in and is blocking the port between the pump and the little 'chamber'?

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Yeah, I need to take a look at it maybe it is that.

Foodsaver FTW!!! Use it for everything Brewing to Smoking/BBQing.
Hops, Grains, Marinating Meats, Curing my own Bacon and Hams etc.

wilceaser said:

Foodsaver FTW!!! Use it for everything Brewing to Smoking/BBQing.
Hops, Grains, Marinating Meats, Curing my own Bacon and Hams etc.

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Don't forget sous-vide. I still have yet to try it though.

Ichthy said:

Use a vacuum sealer of your choice and put your hops in mason jars. You'll need to buy the mason jar attachment but this works awesome and you don't have to mess with bags.

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ive yet to completely understand how this works...

when you vacuum a bag, the air is obviously gone.. in a mason, not so much.

can someone help me figure this out.

its probably a stupid question, but its been a long day so humor me.

HItransplant said:

ive yet to completely understand how this works...

when you vacuum a bag, the air is obviously gone.. in a mason, not so much.

can someone help me figure this out.

its probably a stupid question, but its been a long day so humor me.

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The air IS gone. The bag doesn't leave as much empty space so it may look 'more empty'.

FTW, Foodsaver here as well.

Thanks all for your input! foodsaver it is and the wife said she is "sure" she will find some uses for it also!

HItransplant said:

ive yet to completely understand how this works...

when you vacuum a bag, the air is obviously gone.. in a mason, not so much.

can someone help me figure this out.

its probably a stupid question, but its been a long day so humor me.

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I thought along the same lines regarding the mason jars. I tried to get a handle on how much air was evacuated from the mason jars. I sealed a jar as best I could. I then submerged the jar and broke the lid seal slightly which allowed the jar to fill. When the water influx ceased, I pressed the lid in place an eyeballed the jar. I would estimate that it filled to about 85% or so. Air is mostly inert nitrogen with about 19% oxygen, so the oxygen remaining would be only about 2-3% of atmospheric. The Food Saver type bags collapse and closely conform to the shape of the contents, so the air space volume is minimized. The bags if sealed properly should contain less oxygen than a vacuum sealed mason jar, but I have no idea how significant this might be. I have the Food Saver mason jar attachment, but have not had it long enough to provide a fair evaluation. It looks good to me so far.

HItransplant said:

ive yet to completely understand how this works...

when you vacuum a bag, the air is obviously gone.. in a mason, not so much.

can someone help me figure this out.

its probably a stupid question, but its been a long day so humor me.

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As Hermit said, you can remove the air from a rigid vessel just as well as you can from a bag. The only difference is that the bag collapses, a mason jar doesn't.

I've my hops in mason jars and a chest freezer going on 9 months and have had zero quality issues; the hops are still fresh and there are no signs of freezer burn.

I'm particularly fond of the mason jars because you don't have to continually cut and repackage your hops every time you need them; this requires using a bunch of plastic that is pretty expensive. The jars also store very nicely in my freezer. You can fit a little over 1lb in quart jar. After you use about half of a jar you can easily transfer over to pint jars if you want to use less space.

But the Foodsaver doesn't pull a 'perfect' vacuum or really that close to it so there will always be air in any unoccupied space. So a bag should have less air in it than a mason jar (with free head space) but I don't know how significant the difference is.

Speaking in technicalities I'm sure you are probably correct.
All I'm saying is that my experience with mason jars and hops has been positive.

I also use a food saver and package up bulk hops. I always feel like a drug dealer when I break a pound of hops and package it up into 1 oz bags.

HItransplant said:

ive yet to completely understand how this works...

when you vacuum a bag, the air is obviously gone.. in a mason, not so much.

can someone help me figure this out.

its probably a stupid question, but its been a long day so humor me.

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You can't see a vacuum. In fact it's actually incorrect to refer to it as a thing, because by the classical definition a (complete) vacuum is complete absence of everything , hence nothing to see, measure, or otherwise observe. In other words, there's nothing there.

In this case, the pumps we are using in the FoodSavers etc. are really only creating a partial vacuum in both a bag and a jar. However, these partial vacuums remove enough of the reactive atmospheric gasses (air that is) to greatly extend the original condition of the organic stuff (hops) we're putting in them. Hence, their shelf life is greatly extended.

Even though you can't see the vaccum in a jar, most of the air has still been removed. A good demo is to vaccum seal a bunch of marshmallows in a jar and watch them expand from the air pressure in the tiny bubbles inside them as the air around them is removed and this gas expands and partially escapes. This happens because the jar is strong enough to not deform or crush (at least we hope so), so the marshmallows have to expand. Put the same marshmallows in a bag and the air pressure around the bag will deform and crush the bag to compensate to the air that' s removed from around the marshmallows and will also partially crush the marshmallows as the air inside the tiny bubbles inside them escapes and is also vacuumed out.

Does that help?

Whats fun is when the sheriff shows up at your house because a silly neighbor called in that you were packaging weed in the garage. I spent the next half hour explaining how to homebrew once he realized it was homegrown hops. Fun afternoon

oregonparamedic said:

Whats fun is when the sheriff shows up at your house because a silly neighbor called in that you were packaging weed in the garage. I spent the next half hour explaining how to homebrew once he realized it was homegrown hops. Fun afternoon

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I say no more homebrew for the neighbor!

Then, since he's interested, bring the sheriff to a homebrew club meeting. No one will mess with the homebrew club when they know a police car, even his personal car, is parked out front. Oh and follow him on your way home for as far as you can too!