# Vacuum Bag Selection Criteria



## shooterrick (Dec 5, 2010)

Many of us have been using vacuum sealers for a long time.  For those who are just now beginning or thinking of beginning to use this form of packaging your smoked products and sausage you will soon discover that the cost of the machine is small in comparison to the cost of plastic bags over a short period of time. 

I have put together a discription of the criteria I have found useful for myself trying to balance quality and price.  Original FoodSaver bags are a great quality product but the last box I purchased was 47.00 from Wally World.  If you figure the price per foot that comes to about 80 cents a running foot for rolls of bag material. 

Quality:  Unless you have a very expensive commercial vacuum packaging machine, the kind that holds the bag entirely enclosed in a chamber you have a channel or snorkel type home use machine.  All home use machines I have seen or used require a textured feature in the bag material to fully pull a vacuum.  Some generic bag rolls have just a center strip of texture material while others are fully textured on one complete side of the roll.  The completely textured side is the most desirable as air pockets which must be manually pressed to the center are less likely to occur. *Material thickness should be at least 3mils and 4 mils will resist tearing from sharp corners like bone better and are most likely going to allow you to wash and recycle them several times*. Of course the plastic material should be FDA approved for home use.  No home use machine material is approved by the FDA for packaging for resale.  You may get away with it for awhile out in Podunc Nowere but sooner or later you will be looking at hefty fines so don't do it.   

  
	

		
			
		

		
	








You will find that most home use machines can handle roll material from 6-11 inches wide.  Many commercial machines will take a bag widths up to 15 inches plus.

  







When figuring price add in the shipping and figure your cost per foot of material.  You will soon discover that what may look like a great deal isn't.  This is sometimes the situation with large bulk size rolls.  A 50 ft roll of 8 inch wide material may look like a good price until you add in shipping and figure the actual cost per foot.  I recently bought eight 20 ft rolls of material at 27 cents a foot.  Three 50 ft rolls with shipping would have cost me 34 cents because of shipping.

Some links you may find useful and don't forget to check out the auction sites. 

http://www.foodshell.com/vacuum-sealer-bags-vacuum-sealer-rolls/roll-11-x-18-1-pack-2-rolls.html  

http://www.vacuumpacker.com/index.php  

http://www.vacnsac.com/ordering.php


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## scarbelly (Dec 5, 2010)

In addition to what Rick has posted about bags I want to add something that we have done for the last 15 years with great success to get the most out of our bags. We make all of our bags at least 15" long.  This allows us to remove the food turn the bags inside out and wash and dry them for repeated uses. We get an average of 7 uses out of each bag this way and it cuts way down on how many bags we need to buy


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## dale5351 (Dec 5, 2010)

We have found combination kits of food saver bags at our local warehouse store (BJs) that are a much better buy than those in regular commercial stores, including Walmart.  I don't remember the exact cost now, but if you have access to such a store you should look there for bags and bag rolls.


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## adiochiro3 (Dec 5, 2010)

Thanks y'all.  I would not have thought to reuse these bags!  what a nice idea.  Gosh, I love hanging around this site!


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## mballi3011 (Dec 5, 2010)

Theses day we have started tring to re-use the bags and with the food saver system the bags are smaller but they can be washed pretty easy. But I like to wait for a sale and sometimes you can ever caught them just right and I have gotten as much and 40% soetimes more off the bags. Plus we have a svaer and so does our kids so we can buy in bulk and save even more.


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## tjohnson (Dec 6, 2010)

Great Post Rick!


Scarbelly said:


> In addition to what Rick has posted about bags I want to add something that we have done for the last 15 years with great success to get the most out of our bags. We make all of our bags at least 15" long.  This allows us to remove the food turn the bags inside out and wash and dry them for repeated uses. We get an average of 7 uses out of each bag this way and it cuts way down on how many bags we need to buy




WOW!

And to think, I've been throwing them away.

Thanks Scar!

Todd


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## uncle kenny (Dec 30, 2010)

Thank you for the informative post. We have struggled with our FoodSaver for years; fragile bags do not stand up to the rigors of freezer life. We will often see 50% failures within a few days, mostly in the seal. I will add that our FS is 20 years old but generally puts up about 100 bags per year.

Now that I have been smoking for a while I think our volume will go up and wonder what members here think about the performance of chamber vacs? Besodes the cost issue, what advantages might one expect from a machine like this: http://www.cabelas.com/product/ARY-VacMaster174-VP210-Vacuum-Sealer/716012.uts

I am really tired of digging through the freezer to find my beautiful smoked salmon badly freezer burned in a failed bag! Thanks for any comments.


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## nwdave (Dec 31, 2010)

Give these a look as well.  http://www.vacuumpacker.com

Once in a while, you can buy a reconditioned one on SMF site or someone will post a link for one on sale.  I have a reconditioned one and am very happy with not only the sealer but the seller as well.


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## alblancher (Dec 31, 2010)

Never done business with these people but the prices look competitive

http://www.goodmans.net/get_list_204_3.htm  

getting ready to order my first set of replacemet bags


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## smoke dawg (Jan 2, 2011)

The best deal we have found is to order the food saver bags direct from food saver online. They have some good deals and send cupons for even better deals.


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