Vacuum sealers and ball jars

[zimne_piwo]

Today was the first day I used a vacuum sealer and a ball jar to make a flavoring for alcohol. I recently moved and unfortunately, my sugar wash went tits-up on me so I used some store bought vodka. Nevertheless, I gave the vacuum sealer a shot.

I had some crushed hazelnuts and some coffee handy, so I tried a 28 pound vacuum in a ball jar to macerate hazelnuts and coffee, and my results were very enjoyable. I'm used to macerating for weeks or months, but with a 28 pound vacuum assist, I got a very nicely flavored vodka in four hours. Four hours! I'm definitely going to continue using a vacuum pump and ball jars with other macerations.

I feel some flash frozen black cherries in my very near future.

I don't recall vacuum sealers being discussed on this forum, so I figured I'd get the ball rolling.

[theholymackerel]

Yer sayin' a partial vacuum is makin' the flavours infuse faster?

Really?

Have ya tried it without the vacuum? Maybe it will infuse just as fast without the vacuum.

[rad14701]

While a vacuum would theoretically draw components out of the wood, the vacuum in the jars would be relatively low... I suppose it could potentially yield faster flavoring times...

[Husker]

Yer sayin' a partial vacuum is makin' the flavours infuse faster?

Really?

Have ya tried it without the vacuum? Maybe it will infuse just as fast without the vacuum.

THM, I have a vacuum sealer, that also pulls vacuum from things like jars (with a special lid), and other special containers. I do a lot of marinating of meat and other things by pulling vacuum. It DOES make things infuse much quicker. If you have never done it, you would be shocked with the amount of "air" bubbles that get extracted from things like meats. When you pull strong vacuum on something like meat covered with marinate, the meat will actually expand 10% or so. Now, if the same "opening up" happens on wood/walnuts, I do not know. However, my guess is that it does. If this IS happening, then I think the fastest flavoring, would be applying vacuum, wait a short while, release, wait a little bit, re-apply vacuum, and continue to cycle. This would allow liquid flow in, then force out, then flow in, etc.

I have not tried this, but from my experience with other items, I certainly would not doubt it if someone claimed to use this technique and have it work well.

You are right though, a control should also be done, where you simply put the same amount of wood/walnut into neutral and monitor how it infused. Then changes or improvement (time or end results), would be better shown, and you would know how big a part the vacuum played.

But for meat, I can draw about 1/2" penetration into deer loins (pretty solid material) in about 1/2 hour. Without vacuum, you get little penetration, even if sitting in the fridge overnight.

H.

[punkin]

I got a food saver came with a little jar with a vacuum lid, i'll have to try the marinade thing, probably not the alchohol but, cause i think it's a plastic jug.

[Husker]

I got a food saver came with a little jar with a vacuum lid, i'll have to try the marinade thing, probably not the alchohol but, cause i think it's a plastic jug.

I got all (well most probably), of the plastic storage boxes and jars. However, they also make an adapter that works with a "regular" ball jar (mason jar, canning jar, whatever you want to call it), and I think another adapter that works with a wide mouth.

That allows you to work with glass. Canning jars (good fresh ones), can handle a pretty high vacuum. I have used these before, for short term flavoring/marination. Usually, I use a square plastic "tub" to do my meat marinations in, because there is a lot more surface area (fat squatty little box). I do not know if this makes any difference at all. A tall jar might work just as good, but I have used the flat boxes up to now. But I do know "Food Saver" makes a jar lid, and if someone wanted to test out theory of fast aging hooch, he could do it with those.

H.

[punkin]

I'll have a look around and see what i can find.


edit; there is some stuff out there, might actually go talk to someone in a shop, so sick of googling life...

http://www.totalvac.com/tiliafoodsaver.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[zimne_piwo]

Gents,

I'm going to vacuum seal macerate a bag of Trader Joe's flash frozen black cherries tomorrow and see what the results are like. I've used that fruit many times in the past and will see how it works out under vacuum.

The vac sealer I'm using is a 28 pound device. Supposedly, 28 pounds is kind of a lot for a home device.

I've used it to marinate meats with good success. I just use ball jars, Italian dressing, and the vac sealer, and it takes about an hour to suck the dressing into the meat.

I'm very satisfied with its performance with the ground hazelnut meal so far. Ten minutes into the maceration the nut meal separates into a layer on the bottom and a layer on the top with a thick yellow vodka layer in between. To address the issue of using a control, I poured the distillate into the ground hazelnut and took a couple minutes doing this and that before I took the jars over to the counter to vacuum them. The distillate on the top layer had not changed color at all in those ten minutes or so. Fifteen minutes after vac sealing, there is a thick, dark yellow layer of distillate in between the layer of nut that is presumably saturated and has settled, and a floating layer that presumably still has a ways to go.

I sealed the coffee/distillate yesterday and it's as black as a steer's toches on a moonless prairie night.

[eternalfrost]

Pro-tip: put one of those marshmallow peeps in there
will grow like 10 times its size then all a sudden collapse into a pancake as all the air bubbles pop

used to do that when we were bored in the big vacuum chambers in our lab heh

[junkyard dawg]

another pro tip...

pork tenderloins in the vacuum sealer with ginger, sesame oil, soy sauce and garlic... chile... onion, whatever. ready for the grill in half an hour.

sorry if thats too far off topic.