Alternative to Vacuum Sealing

I saw the thread about the sale on Food Savers (excellent pricing by the way, don't pass this up if you are even remotely thinking about one), and thought I would pass on a second option for vacuum sealing.

I have found that the Food Savers do a great job for long term storage, especially on whole hops where the force of vacuum really compresses the hops and makes them easier to store. However, for pellet hop users (like me), opening and closing the bags on a regular basis can be a pain and also gradually shrinks the size of the bag, or requires a new bag every time ($$$).

I ran across something called the Pump-N-Seal (www.pump-n-seal.com) which is a hand pump for vacuum sealing jars. I did a short article on this here:

http://sdcollins.home.mindspring.com/HopStorage.html

The Pump-N-Seal is very inexpensive and works great for pellet hop storage. On a side note, I have found that the canning jars work the best although you can use almost any sealable jar from your refrigerator. I think I'm going to write this up under the product review section on this forum.

Prosit!

Yeah. I have used these before too, and they are great. My foodsaver, though, has the attachment and a couple containers that you can use in much the same way, so I just use them. As for the bags "shrinking" as you open them, they do, but I still get 8-10 good uses out of a bag before I need to replace them. I then just wash them out, and use them for something else, as they last damn near forever.