Why you need a vacuum sealer

When Mike and I decided to brew larger and more frequent batches, we looked for ways to save money. When you make 5 gallon batches, you don't really appreciate how much of a difference buying in bulk can make. Besides, storing Costco sized amounts of grain and hops takes quite a bit of room. Fortunately, we were given a stand up freezer by my parents a few years ago and had the storage space. So when we couldn't find several varieties of hops we liked, we decided to buy large quantities of our favorite hops (1 or 5 pounds) to ensure we didn't have to worry about finding the right substitute hops. One problem emerged: how to keep the hops and yeast fresh when we store it? Enter the vacuum sealer! 

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VACUUM SEALER
I purchased the Aicok Vacuum Sealer in 2017 from Amazon for under $50. However, they currently do not stock the item. When I checked, there are lots of options for vacuum sealers under $100.

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BAGS
​I tend to use food bags for both hops, yeast, and meal preparation, but I do know that many people prefer to use mylar bags. While mylar bags will keep light and oxygen out of the bags, the bags themselves are more expensive. Also, not all vacuum sealers will work with mylar bags. I tried to use small mylar bags with my vacuum sealer and did not have success. To me, I’m fine with the cost of the food bags and the convenience of them, but I did not want to purchase another vacuum sealer that works with mylar bags. In the future, I can always explore that option if and when my vacuum sealer needs replacing.

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BAG SIZES I LIKE:

1. 2.7x4 inch bags: 12g yeast packets. 
   1. Amazon Link
   2. $10.99 for 100 bags or 11 cents a bag
2. 4x6 inch bags: 24g yeast packets and 2oz hop bags
   1. Amazon Link
   2. $10.99 for 100 bags or 11 cents a bag
3. 6x10 inch bags: 4oz and 6oz hop bags
   1. Amazon Link
   2. $37.49 for 400 bags or 9 cents a bag

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HOPS:
We love hops at 2JBC, and we had a difficult time during COVID finding some of the hops we needed. Now that we are back to brewing regularly, we don’t want to postpone the brewing of a beer based on the availability of hops at our local homebrew shops. Also, some substitutions are not really viable. For example, we had a very hard time finding two hops we use in our beers--Phoenix hops and Sorachi Ace hops. Since vacuum sealing and buying hops in bulk, we no longer worry about the availability of hops. Instead, we stock up, vacuum seal the bags, and buy the hops we regularly use when they go on sale. Our local homebrew shops do not seem to carry Sorachi Ace (either due to difficulty finding it or lack of sales); however, we purchased a 5 pound bag of Sorachi Ace hops from Hops Direct for $5 plus shipping! The savings alone is worth the extra time and effort it takes to package the hops in smaller quantities. 

Since moving to buying hops in large quantities, we have a large selection of hops (currently over 40 different hops) in our freezer ready for use. We mix and match where we buy hops from based on cost, availability, and shipping. Here are a few of the places we purchase hops from:

1. Hops Direct
   
2. Yakima Valley Hops
   
3. Northwest Hop Farms
   

I keep track of our hops in a Google Sheets spreadsheet that lists the name, year, AA, amount purchased, farm purchased from, uses, and flavor/aroma profile. I keep my eye on sales and make sure to always have our favorite hops on hand--centennial, citra, cascade, Saaz, etc. When a particular hop runs low, I purchase more of that hop. When I want to try a new hop variety, I typically buy a one pound bag. Since doing this, I have found a few hops we do not like (here’s looking at you East Kent Golding and Northern Brewer) and a few hops we were surprised to find we did like (Medusa, Arianna, Sonnet, Phoenix).

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How to get started building a hops inventory:

1. Yakima Valley Hop Box: My parents gave us a Yakima Valley hopbox gift. Basically, we get 4 boxes a year filled with 4 pounds of hops in each box (8 ounces of 8 different hops). The hop box is a great way to explore different varieties of hops. Our first box had Triumph, Eclipse, and Idaho Gem which we had never used before. We are planning to tryout these hops in a few upcoming recipes. The most recent hop box is filled with German noble hops, so we easily replaced some of our noble hops. The hopbox might be a great way to explore hops, especially as a starting point. 
   
2. Hops Direct: If you go to their website, they have a hops sale section. I have seen hops as low as $1 a pound. For example, I saw today (May 11) Cascade from 2017 for $2 a pound. Since Hops Direct vacuum seals their hops in mylar bags, these hops will be fine to use. I have had great results using hops that are from 2017. However, you can purchase Cascade from 2019 for $3.90 a pound. If you frequently look through their website, you will find lots of deals on hops that will help you save some money and allow you to brew more frequently. Currently, they have 10% off site-wide on orders over $150. I purchased C02 hop extract from them in 150g tins. This equates to approximately 150ml. Hop shots are $4.99 for 10ml on their site which means that their $28 tin has 15 hop shots in it for the cost of 5.5 hop shots. That’s a huge savings if you’d like to use hop extract in your brewing process.
   
3. Hop Sales: buy last year’s hops and save money. I find the best deals when buying 5 pound bags. However, I only purchase five pound bags of hops for either difficult to find hops or hops I use frequently. 
   
4. Coupons: Lots of times I find coupons on Instagram for hop farms. If you look enough, you will find hops on sale around you and coupons that will save you money. I have yet to find many discounts on hops when I purchase them from my local homebrew shop, so I find I can save more money buying hops directly and storing them in the freezer.
   

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Vacuum Sealing Hops:
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Keeping hops fresh doesn’t have to be difficult, but it does require some space in your freezer. However, if you have a keezer, you can store hops on the side wall if you do not have the storage space. I was fortunate to have a standup freezer that my parents gave to me when they moved. I use the freezer exclusively for hops and yeast storage (I also store large bags of 00 pizza flour from Italy). Since we brew 30 gallon batches frequently, storing large amounts of hops makes sense. You go through a lot of hops making 30 gallon batches of IPAs! Not having to buy them in 1oz packages is a huge bonus! 

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Here’s my process:

1. I only open mylar bags when I am ready to use the hops OR if I have plans to use the hops soon. I don’t want to get stuck with a 5 lb opened bag of hops in the freezer, but I also don’t want to expose the hops to air before I need them. 
2. Once opened, I immediately separate the hops into 2, 4, or 6 oz bags. I typically only use 6oz hop bags for hops used in IPAs or in a lot of beers (e.g., cascade). For most hops, I make 4 oz bags. The 2oz bags are almost exclusively used for hops used in lager beers that require smaller quantities of hops. 
3. I store the vacuum sealed hops in the larger bags they originally came in. 
4. When I brew, I pull out the hops and make sure my vacuum sealer is handy. I measure the hops and then immediately reseal the hops for next time. The hops we use are always stored vacuum sealed in our freezer with partially used hop bags in one place and full hop bags in another.

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YEAST:
Mike and I used to make yeast starters and buy expensive White Labs yeast strains. Inevitably, one of two things would happen. One, something would come up after making a starter that would prevent us from brewing, or we would forget to make the starter and not have enough viable yeast for our wort. Both issues were really bothering us. We finally did a cost analysis if you will of time to taste on yeast and decided that the amount of work needed for liquid yeast vs. the end product wasn’t worth it for us. In fact, we actually prefer the taste of Safale yeast. Yep. We like dry yeast packets. In fact, we use S-04, S-05, and 34/70 in 99% of our beers! Since switching to dry yeast, we have found that we actually get better results--better yeast attenuation, cleaner/crisper beers, and less stressful brew days. We do not use oxygenation wands, we simply drop in dry yeast and get good results. Easy peasy. 

So, why do we vacuum seal yeast you ask? Well, we decided that we would rather have yeast on hand to use whenever we needed. I am not sure you save a ton of money on yeast bricks, but you can definitely keep tabs on yeast and never worry about not having enough yeast on a brew day. In fact, if your yeast doesn’t produce, you can just grab another packet and drop that in. Currently, we buy 500g bricks of Safale yeast on amazon for about $80 a brick. The 34/70 brick, however, is about $125. Each Safale yeast packet you buy at the homebrew shop has 11.5g of yeast. We package our yeast bags as 12 g packets. However, we package 34/70 lager yeast in 24g packets as we use double the yeast on our lagers. Basically, we put our yeast in packets for what we would pitch for 5 gallons. Making a 15 gallon batch? Grab three packets. Keeps things simple for us. Each 500 gram brick makes approximately 41 packets (12g packets) or 21 packets (24g). We recently made 4 new recipes that used 34/70 yeast; we made 14 corny kegs worth of beer and used 14 packets of 24/70 which is close to a brick of yeast. I simply purchased a second brick and am ready to brew again. Currently, we have S-04, S-05, 34/70, and WB-06 yeast on hand. If we make a specialty beer or feel the yeast we have didn’t work well in a beer, then we will explore other options. 

The process:

1. Open the brick of yeast carefully. Put the date you open the bag on the front of the bag.
2. Label the outside of the packets. 
3. Measure the yeast in a small beaker (I use a 100 ml beaker because the yeast is easy to pour into the vacuum sealer bag from the beaker). Tip: use a small wooden spoon to help you measure the yeast as the yeast will stick to metal).
4. Vacuum seal immediately--make sure the small bags expel the air as they can be tricky to fit into the sealer. 
5. Put all of the yeast packets into a gallon ziplock bag with the original brick bag. 
6. Put the yeast into the freezer. ​

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Cheers! 
​2JBC