Sous Vide Water Balls by Sous Vide Bros (Drying Bag)

Sous vide water balls can reduce water evaporation and electricity use: I've used them many times over the past three months -- these balls do a good job of both. My three stars mean to say the product is just OK, it could do better. I held back two stars because (a) at forty bucks for so few balls these are pretty expensive and (b) above 70'C water vapor penetrates the balls. I worry that each might eventually become a little petri dish of undesirable bacteria colonies. Something we, who sous vide, are careful to avoid.Update Sun May 22nd, 2016: A comment to this review invited an update. I'm adding a second photo of the balls in my hand, taken more than two weeks after they were last used. The effect is NOT temporary, unfortunately. Water is accumulating in the balls over time. Most of the balls now have droplets of water in them.Update Mon Aug 1st, 2016: The product description was changed after my review to include the language "NOTE: By design Sous Vide Water Balls contain a small amount of air in order to float. That air contains some moisture which, when heated, can condense inside the ball. This is perfectly normal and water can NEVER enter or leave the ball." Cached copies of this product page at the wayback machine* prove that this new language was added after 13th January 2016. It appears to have been added recently to explain away the problem I complained of. Dry the air before you capture them in these balls if that's all it takes to fix this unsightly problem.[...]

Honestly, when I first got this I had a bit of buyers remorse. I was like "do I really need this?". Then I used it and it does exactly what it needs to do very well. The balls need to be in something sturdy yet porous with a string so they can dry. Do you NEED this? No, you can use a million other things lying around the house to do basically the same thing...but this is perfect.I need to knock a point off though because it is too expensive. It's about 50% overpriced. Could be too many middlemen in the sales chain or trying to recoup marketing costs because it's just a nylon bag with a draw string.

I purchased these for use in my Cambro container and Anova cooker. I ended up returning them because they are quite small and 1 bag did not even cover the surface in the container I used. I could not justify spending another $40-80 to get adequate coverage when foil or plastic wrap does the job just fine. I was also not able to find these type of balls anywhere else and it seems these are now unavailable.

I had a difficult time justifying paying forty dollars for some tiny plastic balls, but I bought them after seeing so many suggestions in coking forums. I'm as surprised as anyone could be that I don't regret the purchase at all.I have an Anova sous vide immersion cooker and it is pretty great. It is weak at higher temperatures though. Realistically, it cannot get the water over 150 Fahrenheit and keep it there. I tried saran wrap over the cooler I was cooking in (a small coleman travel size cooler), but the steam went into the vents on the cooker and it freaked out on me. I was going to try the method of cutting a hole in the cooler that I saw some do, but that would have the same result, I imagine; all of the steam ends up funneling into the vents on the Anova.I purchased these and gave them a shot and I am genuinely shocked at how big a difference they make. There aren't that many, just enough to cover the top of a small cooler. I expected them to help, but it really is night and day. They hold most of the steam and heat in. If you touch the balls while they are in the water, even at 170 degrees the top side is totally cool to the touch, while the underside will easily burn you.

Very disappointed. For the price, I expected a lot more then a small envelope of tiny marble size balls. Didn't even cover half of the bin that I use for Sous Vide. Using plastic wrap will probably do as good of a job. If these were $5 to $10 I'd say they were worth it. At $39 they are way overpriced.

The balls work well, but they're smaller than they look, so it took two (very expensive) sets of water balls to cover the surface of my Sous Vide (fairly large) container with one level of balls. So while I'm very pleased with the functionality - it does cover an irregular surface of a container with bags and a sous vide sticking out, when a traditional cover won't do, improving heat retention and reducing evaporation.

Glad cling film goes $3-5 bucks, I sous vide 3-5 times on a weekly basis using cling film as a make shift lid. Times range from 1-2,3 hrs to 48-72 hr cooks. This is pretty good, however somewhat overpriced, there's no need to have several lids for different containers when cooking sous vide. Balls do look smaller than expected, but exceeded my expectations.

I balked at the price of this bag but got it anyway. That wound up being a good move on my part. It takes a while for 300 water balls to dry and the design of the bag allows for enough air circulation to let them dry fairly quickly. Besides, you need a place to keep those 300 balls when they are not in use.