First Vacuum Packing
It’s not meat but it is our first vacuum packaging. Really cool! The vacuum packager extracts 99.9% of the air from packaging to make it so the food lasts longer and stays fresher. It still needs refrigeration – this isn’t shelf stabilization – but it creates a clean, sanitary, quality presentation with a minimum of packaging materials and thus less waste than plastic trays.
This was not an official meat vacuum packaging bag but rather a scrap of plastic that had come with the vacuum packer. I fashioned a little bag from a corner of it to pack this nipple as a test for the packer. Our first vacuum packing… Gee whiz!
Butcher’s “Paper” would be another option, except that doesn’t work in the stores and it really isn’t paper. Rather the “Butcher’s Paper” is a composite of paper and plastic which is completely non-recycleable.
The Hobart Meat Bandsaw 6614, Hobart Meat Grinder 4822 and the MiniPack Vacuum Packager MVS45XII have all arrived. We moved them into the initial cutting room that is currently mocked up with wooden tables and shelves. We’re at version 2.1 of the mockup. Once we have it solid we’ll build it out of stainless steel.
To see more about the equipment we went with check out the article Equipment Choices for the Butcher Shop.
Outdoors: 74°F/44°F Sunny
Tiny Cottage: 68°F/64°F
Daily Spark: “If I ask my customers what they want, they would say they want faster horses.” -Henry Ford
Walter Jeffries Tinker, Tailor… A bit eclectic & a tad eccentric, polymath, quantum mechanic & Farmer. Also lucky at cards.
Have you checked to see if the vacuum seal will hold at a lower altitude? Our butcher is on Lookout Mountain, and we live down in the valley. Our beef doesn’t stay sealed, and he told us it’s because it’s sealed at a higher altitude and loses the seal down below. It’s such a disappointment because we get freezer burn a lot faster.
I haven’t check that but I will because I don’t believe your butcher is correct. The altitude has nothing to do with the sealing which is dependent on a heating wire and the dwell time. The vacuum pump is very strong, drawing out 99.9% of the air while the difference between even an extremely high altitude and sea level would be trivial compared to that. At a lower altitude the ‘vacuum’ inside the bag would actually be relatively more intense. I’ll test it but I don’t believe it. I think your butcher simply is having equipment trouble. Experimentation will tell.