Hey fellas, just starting to store for long term...we will be storing hard red winter wheat, rice, sugar, whole oats, and beans to start with...we have aquired a lot of used food grade containers and have some questions....the containers are in great shape but do have food odor in them (nacho cheese and jalepenos mostly)...is their any acceptable alternatives to using the mylar bags? we have a food saver vacum sealer and was wondering if that would not be better? if so, would we still need to but the oxygen absorbers in the bag with the grain? any help would be greatly appreciated...thanks in advance!
Foods will more than likely take on the odors, unless you find a way to clean them, like a baking soda solution. I always use the oxygen absorbers, not having access to a nitrogen cylinder. Keeps them dang bugs from munching on your foods. Vacuuming is not a guarantee of removing all of the oxygen....just most of the air. You may get some bugs, but not as many by vacuuming.... Bill
thank you we cleaned the hell outta 'em, but we didn't try baking soda, just regular dish soap, I'll try that tonight.......the jalepeno ones are great cause we're just gonna use those to store beans and actually hope they do indeed take on the flavor....but for the wheat, etc., not so much.
Bleach water is what I've used to make sure that food grade buckets were super clean and odor free. I let them sit (full) where the sun could hit them for 2 days, then let them air dry upside down for a week prior to use. I'm sure if my method is dangerous (or just stupid ), someone here will let us both know pretty soon .
thanks for the tips.....we were wonderin' about the bleach, but wasn't sure if'n it would be safe or damaging to the mylar bags....I guess though that if you can add bleach to your water to purify it, the trace element left in the 'pores' of the plastic should be fine too?
the place we picked up beans at yesterday gave us a sheet on storing in food grade buckets using dry ice that does not include the use of any secondary bagging......just pour the grains/beans over the dry ice........anyone have any opinions on this?
I was going to recommend using dry-ice. That's just frozen CO2 and it will displace ALL the oxygen in the bucket. I recently opened a bucket of oats that I sealed about five years ago and they were still good.
Coffee removes the smell. Make a cup of black instant coffee and swill the bucket out with it. Gets rids of most odours.