Re:VacMouseketeers POST HERE!!!!

[Peter Kalbach]

So I had just bought and sealed by first ribeye using my V3880 foodsaver when I read about the volunteers for testing the VacMouse. I received my order last week and immediately had to try it out, but first my story on using the “old” technique with a channel sealer bag sleeve.

My first attempt looked at first to be perfect. Got the ribeye in the bag, used a sleeve of foodsaver bag as I read about and the automatic switch on my foodsaver kicked it, perfect vacuum and I thought perfect seal. Place in on a rack in the refrig and hours later noticed I no longer had a vacuum. Upon examination the sealer didn’t quite make it through the 4 layers of the different bag material. It looked good, but just didn’t stick. Peeling it open I tried many different tricks, single layer of bag, smaller strip long ways in the bag and after seeling cutting off the excess foodsaver material and sealing the UMAi bag again. Nothing quite worked well, but I finally got it most of the way and back to the drying rack.

With the VacMouse in hand I thought all would be great. The V3880 has one good feature for sealing the UMAi bags and one bad feature. The good feature is the Pulse Vac setting. By enagaging this mode the vacuum doesn’t start immdediatly, the unit locks the bag and waits for the Pulse Vac button to be pressed. This allows you to pause during vacuuming to work the air out of the corners and then continue on when ready. The bad feature is the automatic trigger, the UMAi bag and VacMouse just isn’t stiff enough to put into the channel and trigger the switch. By opening the unit and aligning the bag and mouse and then closing the unit I then used a piece of foodsaver bag to push into the channel and trigger the switch, This has to be done quickly else the unit errors out. After a few tries I was able to pull the material back quick enough so that all was ready for me to begin the vacuum using the pulse mode. I started having to pause a couple of times to work the excess air out of the corners of the bag and then resumed until I had a good vacuum and the sealer kicked in. No problems with the VacMouse interferring with the seal as it melted right away.

So first attempt was good, a little struggle with the automatic nature of the foodsaver. I’ll do another test this coming week and try to get some photos.

The only recommendation for the VacMouse at this point would be some way to make it stiffer so it triggers the switch and to hook it to the edge of the bag so that it doesn’t shift out of place when sliding it into these automatic type foodsavers.