The Original Dry Bag Steak | Make Artisan Dry Age Steak at Home › Forums › Dry Aging Steak › General Dry Aging Steak Questions › Sealing issues › Re:Sealing issues
Rob BabcockI’ve got the VP112. It’s the home model of chamber sealer, and I love it. Single seal bar (which means that I have to seal twice most times).
This isn’t scientific but it seems that the drybags need a longer seal time to get the right seal. For a regular vacuum bag I use a setting of 6. For a drybag I use a setting of 9. I get great seal quality.
I found that at 6, the drybags didn’t really seal. And 9 worked. I didn’t try 7 or 8. And of course there’s no way to correlate what I got with my 112 to what you get with your 215. I think you get the better vacuum pull. I get something that works on the countertop!
Toasty
I think the controls must work a little differently on mine than yours. First I must select the vacuum time. IIRC that can range up to 99 seconds. Then I choose the sealing time; that it the amount of time, in seconds, that the seal bar heats. Next I choose a cooling time, also in seconds, that the heat bar is held against the material before the lid opens. Lastly, independent of those controls there’s a separate setting for the voltage applied to the seal bar. You can select HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW or OFF (with off being handy for doing flash pickling where you’re not using a bag, just an open container).
As you’ve probably noticed it’s maddeningly difficult to get all the factors to align on every kind of bag. If I use a lower setting the bag pulls apart. A higher setting burns through the material cutting the top off the bag. I had thought I found success with a second or two of heat and a long cool but after a couple of days those seals too have failed. I’ll keep fiddling with it but I’m not optimistic. My “Plan B” is to seal them per my best guess, then apply a SealStix or Banana Seal ahead of the seal. And on the way home from work tonite I stopped by Wally-World and picked up a few pairs of panty hose. That raised the eyebrows of the checkout lady!
My initial experiments show that both the SealStix or Banana Seal will hold a good tight seal. The Banana Seal sealed bag held up overnight to a bag sealed with 29″ of vacuum with no heat seal applied. That’s at least as good of result as I’m getting heat sealing drybags. With luck, a heat seal + a sealing stick + panty hose to keep it all compressed until a good crust is formed will = dry aged beef!
Not sure how to explain the panty hose to the health dept, though… :blink: 👿