Storing grains

I just got some base malts in bulk. I was wondering the best to stores them and how long they will stay fresh. Thanks

~20lbs will fit in a 5 gallon pail. Available at your home improvement stores.

Other places for pails:

Bakery: jelly filling, frostings. Also some smaller 2g pails will fit ~10lbs.
Asian resturant: Soy sauce come in <5 gallon pails. I have 3-4 that have no odor to them.

Some of these places give the pails away. Others have found that the are a wanted item and are charging $1-2 for them.

Keeping them sealed, they should be fine for brewing for a couple of years. If you are going to use them in 1-3 months, you can just roll the bag shut.

The key is keeping them dry and reasonably cool. High humidity and really warm temperatures will help them go stale faster. I keep mine in a metal trash can and some plastic totes in my garage which is in the mid 30’s in the winter and only about 70 at the warmest in the summer, also at high altitude with low humidity, so it is easy for me to keep grain for 1-2 years.

I bought a 33 gallon rubbermaid trash can with a lock on cover. I store my bulk grains and specialty grains all in this conainer in the basement that is dry and cool. Grains will last uncrushed for a period of time, say up a year. I am on my second year for some of my grains and they are still in good shape. Fresher is better though. Its just my lack of brew time while in school that is keeping me from using these up. just throw a few grains in th mouth and chew them beor batching to taste freshness. should be crunchy and not stale tasting. It’s summer now so the brew is on.
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Not the cheapest option, but I’m an Amazon Prime whore: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0002D … UTF8&psc=1

Really, pretty reasonable if you consider that these will last a very long time and have a gasket to give you a really good seal. Also, they’re made for this application (e.g., grain for horses).

Home Depot orange 5 gallon pails with lid for $5…

I use my retired brewing fermentation buckets and put 20 pounds of grain in each labeled. Most of my 10 gallon brews use 20 lbs of base grain, so very easy to just add my specialty grains and off to the grain mill on brew day.

I put my base malt in the clear Utz pretzel containers from Sams Club. Each one holds about 10-11 lbs. I put adjunct grains in the Pub Mix containers and each of those holds 5-6 lbs. I have 300+ lbs of malts stored this way and they sit on top of my cupboards in the garage so they are out of the way.

I use hardware store buckets, too. I keep everything indoors as it’s too humid and hot outside. One bucket holds 25lbs +/-.

+1 - the vessel you keep the grain in is less important than the temperature and humidity. Buckets, garbage cans, totes, tupperware, wastebaskets… all work great provided you can keep grain cool and dry. My basement stays high 50’s to low 60’s and very dry - so storage has never been a problem. But, high humidity and warmer temps can not only cause grain to stale, but can cause weevil hatches in your grain that won’t happen at cooler, dryer temps…

Notice that LHBS’s have grain stored in bins with lids and not tightly sealed. I am sure they go through it pretty fast

I use Greg’s idea of the Utz pretzel containers for all my specialty grains. These work perfectly.

I leave mine in the garage all year round. I suppose I should bring them down into the basement for the summer months but that sounds like a lot of work and I go through the grain pretty fast.