Food storage bags

[Jan S]

Okay, so I know the usual recommended way is to prepackage everything into ziplocs and just add water. Living in Europe where backcountry means you pass a village once a day instead of 4 times, I tend to dislike the whole freezer bag and post resupplies by mail idea. Oh, and I like to cook and hate the amount of trash you produce with ziplocs (they aren't the most durable thing around).

My preferred way so far has been to just carry basic ingredients and just add stuff I could buy in the shops once a day (vegetables and some form of meat mostly), while carrying a bigger supply of things like couscous or pasta. Mostly because they don't sell it in small packages.

The only trouble with this approach is storing couscous in some form of container that doesn't break in two to three weeks of continued use. What I'd like to do is cut bags made from freezer bag material (PU/PE?) to size and make a liner for an STS UltraSil Nano dry bag. The problem I have with this, is that I haven't found a way to connect the freezer bags to the silnylon. Any ideas on that?

[Kevin Beeden]

Surely, all you're trying to do is use the silnylon bag to protect the more fragile PE food bag. In which case, why do you need to attach the PE bag to the silnylon bag? Just roll up the PE bag, and stuff it into the silnylon bag.

Or use pour'n'store bags on their own, as they're quite a bit tougher than 'sandwich bags'.

[Jan S]

The main reason is actually a roll top closure for freezer bags because I don't really trust those ziploc like closures for longer use. I also don't mind producing less waste by not having to throw the bag away after every trip. And I get something neat if I find some useable glue that works on silnylon and freezer bags – no bags sliding or opening in other bags, no coffee or milk powder everywhere.

Guess I'll have to experiment with SilNet a bit tonight.

[Dustin Short]

I doubt you'll get a good adhesive that won't delaminate with minor peel force (but if you do, please share!).

I still agree with the above poster that just using a ziploc (maybe one of those nicer bags with a slider zip) stuffed into the dry bag will work fine. Just because you're trip is over doesn't mean you have to throw the bag out…rinse and dry and keep using it until it needs replacement. By bonding it to the silnylon you actually create more waste since you'll have to replace two bags instead of one when either part fails, unless you cut out the old PE liner and glue in a new one (but that's messy).

Also the dry bag is inherently water proof, why don't you just use that by itself? You could wrap it in a trash compacter or turkey bag for a second layer of protection (or another silnylon/cuben stuff sack). By simple double bagging like this you're essentially limiting the moisture that can enter the sack to nothing more than what you'd get from a really warm and humid day…assuming the drybag failed on you.

It could be a fun project but I don't see any actual benefit to it from a practical sense, just edu-tainment value.

[tyler marlow]

Lawson Kline at http://www.lawsonequipment.com/is currently working on some super heavy duty ziplock type bags. He said he could fill one up with air or water and run it over with his truck and the seal would still hold.

[Jan S]

I'm not sure if the real Ziplocs are better built, but of the 10 bags I found and used here in Germany about half fell apart (as in broken beyond use or repair) on a five day trip. Luckily they waited till after use but given I opened them exactly once to get the prepackaged food out I was not impressed. There might of course be better ones somewhere, but I really don't see them holding up for even a week of daily use.

I know Aloksaks might probably work, but they're more expensive then those STS dry sacks. And it's extremely easy to make new bags out of relatively tough old PE shopping bags (not the thin ones with holes in them, more like freezer bags in very large).

And yes, it probably is in large parts edutainment, although transporting food like coffee, milk powder and couscous in a way that doesn't produce breakfast in my pack at some rainy point and is easy to use has been bothering me for a while.

[David Thomas]

>"I'm not sure if the real Ziplocs are better built, but of the 10 bags I found and used here in Germany about half fell apart"

In the USA, the name brands (Ziplock and Glad) definitely outperform the off brands. The even bigger distinction is between regular ziplocks and "freezer" bags. The freezer bags are thicker and more durable.

Since you're putting them in silnylon drybags anyway, how about this: use non-zip, decent thickness plastic bags of appropriate sizes. Burp the air out and twist the neck closed. Tuck it in the silnylon bag. Put ALL your little plastic bags of stuff in one silnylon bag – that will use less total silnylon and save you weight and cost.

Or experiment and find better quality zip-locks. But putting them all in one larger silnylon dry bag would be my strong suggestion. If volume is not a huge issue, you could also pre-pack each meal into a zip-less plastic bag so you don't have so many little bags to deal with at one time.

[Mark Fowler]

When walking the GR5 I carried a few heavy duty rubber bands and a few standard ziplock bags (but I did bring them with me from Australia). With couscous and milk powder, which generally come in a cardboard carton, I just folded down the carton lid and slipped a rubber band around it to keep it closed. I then put in a ziplock bag just to ensure any minor leakage was contained. I used this with various other products as well. With pasta I used to split up the 500g bag into 5 ziplocks (one meal each) recycling the ziplocks about 6 or 7 times over the 100 days.

I do put all food into silnyon stuff sacs – one for dinner/breakfast and another for lunches/snacks.

[Franco Darioli]

I am a big fan of thick rubber bands too.
I used to get them from our photo lab (they came with UW disposable cameras) now my postman leaves some on the footpath (pavement) for me.

[Dan Yeruski]

Take a look at this:

http://www.packagingnews.co.uk/news/coffee-bag-brewing-system/

You should be able to find a bag of fresh ground coffee somewhere that is packaged in a double zip lock system. They are made to opened and closed many many times.

I did some testing of the coffee type bags and they are great.

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