Help!

OK it's barely 3 hours into my first meat experience. And it's already gone wrong.

I looked at the bags in the bath before going to bed and they were floating. Pockets of air were in the meat bags.

Not good. What to do? I removed the bags and inspected. Had they leaked? It didn't seem so since I could rotate them and they didn't appear to be leaking. Was this normal behavior? What do I do now?!

I took them out of the bath and dropped them into the fridge. We'll see if that was the right call.

Where to turn to for tech support for this? Is it a sous vide question? Is it a cryovac question? Time to put the manufacturers of these devices to the test and see how their support is. It's 2:00am so it'll have to wait until tomorrow. I need a sous vide hotline!

.....

So I'm at the website of the manufacturer of the sous vide machine where they explain how to cook sous vide style. It's not looking good. The meat doesn't seem to be floating at all. And no air pockets. So this is definitely not normal.

So it seems that the cryovac machine settings might be off. Wondering if there wasn't enought vacuum to begin with or whether the seal was somehow weak. Guess we will have to make a few calls tomorrow. Meanwhile, here's hoping that my meat isn't growing a nice culture of botulism in the bags in the fridge. Where to find out more??

......

So here's the word from Jason Logsdon of www.CookingSousVide.com

"I saw you had a post about your bags floating? There's two normal causes for that. The first is that the vacuum isn't strong enough. The second is that things cooked for extended times release gases stored in the food, these tend to puff the bags out. As long as the meat is still underwater it will be fine or you can use a plate or bowl to weigh down the food to hold it underwater. I've found that using larger bags helps since it gives the air more room to move up without pulling the bag out of the water."

I found the cause of the issue was actually my son. He changed the vacuum time from 45 seconds to 20 seconds when he was using the vac pac machine. It just didn't have enough time to suck all the air out. I bought a second brisket and tried cooking it without searing (to compare if it's worth the effort to pre-sear rather than post sear) and it's been fine.

Thanks for the help!