vaccum food packer
- Thread starter jmcgiff01
- Start date
Chamber packer, or tabletop?
Have used those from Lidle/Aldi they last a good while before suction performance depreciates, certainly happy with them and see no need to go spending a fortune, in fact I’ve bought one as a reserve while they were on offer, they are that cheap.
WB
WB
I have a Buffalo. It's dreadful. I wish I'd sent it back as "unfit for purpose". It's a chamber packer.
I also have a LaVa tabletop (domestic) machine. It's excellent.
The Buffalo was supposed to be an upgrade. I know better now.
If you only want to spend up to, say, £500 then get a top-of-the-range tabletop machine. If you're prepared to spend £2,500+ then get a chamber machine. Don't by a cheap (£500 - £600) chamber packer.
@Freeforester gave me some good advice re: vacuum packers. I wish I'd paid more attention.
I also have a LaVa tabletop (domestic) machine. It's excellent.
The Buffalo was supposed to be an upgrade. I know better now.
If you only want to spend up to, say, £500 then get a top-of-the-range tabletop machine. If you're prepared to spend £2,500+ then get a chamber machine. Don't by a cheap (£500 - £600) chamber packer.
@Freeforester gave me some good advice re: vacuum packers. I wish I'd paid more attention.
Had one of these for a couple of years now it’s excellent. Tip I would give is buy the rolls from the same manufacturer they are good quality. Amazon Choice it takes a range of roll sizes and has an inbuilt cutter
Freeforester
Well-Known Member
Here’s some more advice to ignore: don’t try to pass venison from pregnant females taken at the end of March as ‘top quality’ produce if your business is involved with promoting high quality food produce - the well grown foetus has taken a whole lot of producing by the dam, and any resulting produce would only serve to harm your business. This is not from personal experience, but from common sense, just as ‘what to expect’ when buying cheap kit for using to try to obtain ‘professional’ results . To imagine that any regular customer might not notice is a costly folly.
DevonRifle
Well-Known Member
I’m afraid it’s the same with rutting bucks. The burgers definitely weren’t the usual quality.
Nobody talks about having a close season for males during the rut though, do they?
Would make perfect sense.
DevonRifle
Well-Known Member
I have had a lidl one.... did what it said on the box and lasted 2 years until it died and I got my money back..... (always keep the receipt)
then I had a sub vide one.... ok but overheated if doing a whole fallow in one batch. I then picked up a sous vide chamber one second hand (top of domestic low commercial grade) for 100 quid.... not the fastest but bloody good
then I had a sub vide one.... ok but overheated if doing a whole fallow in one batch. I then picked up a sous vide chamber one second hand (top of domestic low commercial grade) for 100 quid.... not the fastest but bloody good
Quixote
Well-Known Member
If it's for limited-use domestic purposes there's nothing at all wrong with the cheap table top units. I used one myself for a long time with no complaints. Once I started doing larger quantities though, I found the cycle time just wasn't fast enough, and the time to cut and seal bags at one end was just too onerous. I moved onto a couple of chamber sealer models, and the improvement was impressive. I use a Henkelman Jumbo 42 now, and it's basically doubled my packaging capacity, and quartered the time it takes.
They ain't cheap though!
They ain't cheap though!
Lakeland. Does well for the 2-3 deer I put in the freezer
I have found the opposite. The Buffalo chamber packer is painfully slow compared to the LaVa table top unit I was using previously.
If I'd have spent 2× as much on a chamber machine, and got something like yours, maybe it would be better, but the Buffalo takes about a minute per package, which when you're doing half-a-dozen fallow in one session takes up a fair chunk of time. It's also not so controllable as the tabletop machine, for example when packing items on polytrays. It either crushes the trays or, turn it down a setting, and it doesn't pack them firmly enough.
The only gain I have found is when doing a long run of repetitive packing like loads of equal sized packs of mince or dice, where I can be weighing out and filling the next bag while the previous one is in the machine, and labelling the one from before. But even so I can work faster than the machine.
Very frustrating.
Quixote
Well-Known Member
I've no experience with the Buffalo unit, but a friend has one and absolutely slates it. Not their finest hour, for sure.
The Henkelman I have is almost a couple of thousand new, which is a scary thought for someone who only wants one for occasional use. There are others though. Vevor do a a good little unit for a couple few hundred, and Sous-vide Tools have a couple too. But if you want the speed and adjustability of the commercial units there's a price to pay
Definitely not their finest hour!I've no experience with the Buffalo unit, but a friend has one and absolutely slates it. Not their finest hour, for sure.
The Henkelman I have is almost a couple of thousand new, which is a scary thought for someone who only wants one for occasional use. There are others though. Vevor do a a good little unit for a couple few hundred, and Sous-vide Tools have a couple too. But if you want the speed and adjustability of the commercial units there's a price to pay
I wish I'd sent it straight back.
Trouble is, I'd seen Buffalo products recommended on here many times, so thought it would be worth a punt on that basis.
I won't be recommending it, that's for sure!
I can’t speak to their chamber vacuum machines, but I have the GF457 model that I use with the Bonsenkitchen bags from Amazon.
I bought it secondhand from a sandwich shop in Hounslow, so it had already had a hard life. It still performs faultlessly, and when I did hit a problem with one of the vacuum switches I could buy the spares on the Internet and fix it myself.
I also have one of their CC770 models as a back-up, which I take with me on fishing holidays to seal up any fish we catch. It works well too.
I bought it secondhand from a sandwich shop in Hounslow, so it had already had a hard life. It still performs faultlessly, and when I did hit a problem with one of the vacuum switches I could buy the spares on the Internet and fix it myself.
I also have one of their CC770 models as a back-up, which I take with me on fishing holidays to seal up any fish we catch. It works well too.
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