Storing Whole Grains

[BigNastyBrew]

Looking to start buying bulk grains really soon but I want to make sure I can store them right. I remember a brewstrong episode talking about grains and storage. I know I need to keep the relative humidity down (no problem in Phoenix). But what about temps? It can get really fucking hot in my garage.

I can try to snake some closet space from the ole lady but it might be pushing it.

Help a brotha out.

[SacoDeToro]

I store most of my specialty grains in empty protein powder jars, which hold about 5lbs each. My bulk grain sacks go into a Rubbermaid Brute trashcan. My garage often gets up to 100+ degrees in the summertime. things seems to stay very dry in there on their own, so I haven't felt the need to use any sort of desiccant. I've never had any issues with grains going bad even with storage times just over a year.

[BigNastyBrew]

I store most of my specialty grains in empty protein powder jars, which hold about 5lbs each. My bulk grain sacks go into a Rubbermade Brute trashcan. My garage often gets up to 100+ degrees in the summertime. things seems to stay very dry in there on their own, so I haven't felt the need to use any sort of desiccant. I've never had any issues with grains going bad even with storage times just over a year.

I'm assuming you get multiple sacks into one brute trashcan? (I said sacks). If I wanted to keep a 50 sack of Pils, MO, American 2-row, and wheat, would 1 brute can hold them or should I shoot for 2?

If you're 100° in your garage, you're about the same as here. At my brewing rate, I don't expect to keep them stored too awfully long.

[MattSF]

I ended up buying Rubbermaid bins with lids. They're roughly squareish with rounded corners and sort of wider at the top than the bottom. When I bought them I was trying to guesstimate how many "gallons" you'd get from a pound of barley malt. Reason being, those Rubbermaid and other storage containers like trash cans etc, are all labeled with how many gallons they hold (in the US, elsewhere I presume liters) 13, 33, 45, 60 etc.

I was at work at the time when I wanted to hit the hardware store so I went searching online everywhere for a decent conversion to tell me the volume of a pound of whole barley malt I ended up here: http://www.freewebs.com/nq3x/beer.htm To quote the site "The Briess two-row weighed, on average, 1.5 lbs/L; the Maris Otter, 1.32 lbs/L"

From that, I garnered that a "gallon" of malt is about 5.3 lbs. So a 55 lb sack of grain when poured out will fill about 10 gallons of a container.

I bought the 18 gallon container size to give me some breathing room. I'm using fresh thick trash bags as liners in the containers, and twist tie them tightly when not in use. Fit the lid on to keep out critters, dust, etc.

[huskerbrew]

I use the Homer buckets from Home Depot. At 5 gallons, 1 sack will just make it into two buckets. The lids have o-rings to keep everything airtight. The best part is that you can catch them for about $3-$4 a piece when they're on sale. I've kept grains for a year this way.

[Bugeater]

I use these rolling bins from the pet department at WalMart.


These will hold a 50/55 lb bag of malt with a little room to spare. Also they have an O-ring seal to keep air and humidity out.

Wayne

[MattSF]

casters and an o-ring? damn! ok anyone want 5 18-gallon Rubbermaid containers?

[siwelwerd]

casters and an o-ring? damn! ok anyone want 5 18-gallon Rubbermaid containers?

The casters are a little trickier to add on, but if you're not happy with your seal go to home depot and get some foam weather stripping tape to go around the lip of your container. Not quite as good as an O-ring, but it's served me well.