VacMouseketeers POST HERE!!!!

[Thea]

Great responses thus far. “evil4blue” you’ve sure set the bar high for everyone to respond!! “Andy,” your perspective was equally as rich and helpful. “RPP,” you provided yet another substantial contribution and valuable perspective.

“Aiki” and “toasty,” we are looking forward to the details of what you have wrestled with. That will be really helpful to future Forum participants.

We have lots more folks with VacMouse test kits in hand and working away. We hope that there is a great flurry of activity this weekend and more information comes flooding in!

Warmest regards,

Thea, aka BagLady :cheer:

[Barry]

After working with the “smart” Foodsaver, it has not worked out. It would be worth finding an older model, replace the gaskets if necessary and use the Vacmouse. Since there is a sensor that trips the sealing mechanism, the pantyhose trick would be invaluable to the process.
Other than that, the first ribeye is halfway there and a second one has been in the refrigerator for two days!

[Ron Pratt]

aiki wrote:

quote :

… It would be worth finding an older model, replace the gaskets if necessary and use the Vacmouse.

Here’s an idea…I know for a fact that the company that makes FS sells factory re-furbished units at a steep discount. You might want to check with them to see what older or at least less sophisticated models they have available. As I recall even these refurbs have some kind of warranty.

Ron

[Steven Almas]

RRP wrote:

quote :

just an observation I have had so far…either my old Food Saver model 1050 has had a gasket problem all its life thus producing very narrow, but sharp and deep seals or the newer models have a wider sealing band! Could that be part of the reason we are getting different sealing results?

I’ve worked now with 3 different FS models, the first one I had was in the 1000 series, but I don’t think it was the 1050. The seal has looked pretty much the same on all of them, and nice wide (somewhere around 1/8″) band.

In fact, this is what troubled me about my sinbo, the sealing wire, was just that, a couple hot wires, ver thin and never felt like it was giving me the nice seal I got with the FS.

[Barry]

Good idea on the refurbished units. The snorkel has it’s set of problems as does the thin wire seal.

[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.

[Jim]

Picture from the UMAi DrybagSteak R&D fridge. 🙂

Indeed the pics can’t reside on the forum server.
So to post pics we have to put the photos to photobucket.com and then paste the link into the text space and they will appear.

[Scott Mark]

DrybagSteak wrote:

quote :

Picture from the UMAi DrybagSteak R&D fridge. 🙂

I _TOLD_ you that posting pictures is an iffy business!

[Steven Almas]

Just a little update, I checked on my strip this weekend as it was the first time in about a week I actually opened my dry aging fridge and everything looks great. The meat is turning a great maroony-brown color and I got a nice beefy fridge burp when I opened it. The seal still looks great even though I only double sealed the bag and did have quite a bit of blood run up the VacMouse when I sealed it.

So I guess blood in the VacMouse does not prevent good vacuum seal, at least in this case.

[Jim]

UMAi DrybagSteak R&D Fridge week 2. This 16.2 lb ribeye sealed using VacMouse.

[Ron Pratt]

DrybagSteak wrote:

quote :

UMAi DrybagSteak R&D Fridge week 2. This 16.2 lb ribeye sealed using VacMouse.

SEE? It’s not rocket science! LOL!!!

[Jim]

Us tech illiterates need an explanation 🙂

[Scott Mark]

DrybagSteak wrote:

quote :

Us tech illiterates need an explanation 🙂

This is – hopefully – just a little friendly banter about posting images on the forum. RRP has done a great job of tutoring how to use photobucket.

I was probably out of line, but it was all intended to be friendly banter.

[Jim]

Well it was well directed. We since posted a message on the forum with some instructions. Any improvement suggestions to the instructions are welcome.

[Shane Teasley]

Newbie here and I mean absolute newbie as my first time using drybags was this test. I’ve looked into the product for a couple of years and to be honest purchasing the sealer had been keeping me from trying drybags as I have a FS professional II.. I was contemplating drybags again and perusing the forum the day the call went out for volunteers so I jumped on it and I’m a little late to the party getting started on my test but I have jumped in head first.

I won’t be able to post pics till tomorrow but I started Wed night with a strip loin from Sams. I first tried playing around a little experimenting with one bag testing the vacuum override and various sealing numbers to glean how drybags would behave compared to FS bags. I tried a full piece of the vacmouse material as well as trimmed it down as per one of the above posters. Once my confidence was gained I tried and my first attempt I couldn’t get a good vacuum but with a little adjusting I was able to obtain what I thought was a decent vacuum and seal. I went ahead and sealed once more above the original seal and thought this wasn’t too bad. I admittedly read through a bunch of posts and gained others insights to tricks such as panty hose, massaging the air, etc. My foodsaver has the vacuum override as I mentioned and without that I wouldn’t have been successful IMO. I’ve seen reference to the dry/moist setting in other posts and without the override I may have been able to do this with a machine that offers those settings but absent either I don’t think I could do this. Maybe others can and do but I don’t see me being able to be able to use drybags on a FS without those type settings.

Ok, now before I continue and since this is my first attempt and I don’t want to hijack this thread I do have several questions/concerns and would have them even if I was using the snorkel sealer. If I need to post elsewhere I will but my main concern is how well of a bond I was able to achieve since I have no frame of reference. I’ve looked at some pictures posted here and I see some wrinkles or ridges in the bags in some and I have some as well. I really don’t know if it’s bonding properly or what to expect. Yesterday there was a slight bump I noticed on part where it wasn’t snug. This was on the top and I decided to flip the meat over thinking its still early in the process and by flipping the weight of the meat will now cause the bonding to happen on that side. I have a small fan that I’m running near the meat and it’s sitting on a slightly raised wire rack on the bottom of the fridge. The other concern was just how much space does it need? I realize more is better but what is the minimum amount? I took out the bottom drawer and shelf and have it placed there. I’m going tomorrow to get another rack as this one is raised about an inch and I have about an inch or so on each side of the primal and about 4 inches to spare above it. I think with the fan the airflow is good but giving serious consideration to moving it up on a midshelf, the rest of the fridge be damned. Later on I will have access to a completely empty full size fridge and I plan on doing several at a time but for now this is what I have.
Like I said I will not have pics till later but any advice is appreciated.

[Author]

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