Posted: 6/17/2010 6:05:54 AM EDT
| I'm thinking about stockpiling wheat (as opposed to expanding my flour preps). What are the advantages, if any? It seems like it might be cheaper, with the trade-off being the time investment to mill it. Any difference in longevity or utility? |
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Wheat berries, the grain, will last many, many times longer in storage than flour––think decades with proper storage.
Yes, you will have to mill it when you need it, but it will be there in 30 years while flour will not. Store it in mylar bags, sealed with oxygen absorbers, in a food-grade plastic bucket. Put buckets in a cool dry place and forget about it until needed. |
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Wheat berries, the grain, will last many, many times longer in storage than flour––think decades with proper storage. Yes, you will have to mill it when you need it, but it will be there in 30 years while flour will not. Store it in mylar bags, sealed with oxygen absorbers, in a food-grade plastic bucket. Put buckets in a cool dry place and forget about it until needed. Thanks. What is a good source for mylar bags, etc? |
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Ther are several sources. Hopefully others will chime in with more options, but the last ones I got came from internetgrocer I believe. They also have oxygen absorbers.
Search these forums, there is a wealth of information here. Just go through tacked threads and old threads. In an hour you WILL be edumacated. |
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Ther are several sources. Hopefully others will chime in with more options, but the last ones I got came from internetgrocer I believe. They also have oxygen absorbers. Search these forums, there is a wealth of information here. Just go through tacked threads and old threads. In an hour you WILL be edumacated. +1 This site will answer any questions you have... |
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Wheat berries, the grain, will last many, many times longer in storage than flour––think decades with proper storage. Yes, you will have to mill it when you need it, but it will be there in 30 years while flour will not. Store it in mylar bags, sealed with oxygen absorbers, in a food-grade plastic bucket. Put buckets in a cool dry place and forget about it until needed. Thanks. What is a good source for mylar bags, etc? Wheat doesn't need to be packed away with mylar and absorbers. Just pack away in food grade plastic or leave in the bag. Grains and beans don't need the whole treatment. 
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Quoted: Thanks. What is a good source for mylar bags, etc? https://www.usaemergencysupply.com/emergency_supplies/mylar_food_storage_bags.htm https://www.usaemergencysupply.com/emergency_supplies/oxygen_absorbers.htm http://www.sorbentsystems.com/mylar.html |
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LDS
LDS has 6 #10 cans prepacked and postage paid for $28. That's about 33lbs of wheat. They also have 7mil mylar bags, but you have to buy 200+. |
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Wheat berries, the grain, will last many, many times longer in storage than flour––think decades with proper storage. Yes, you will have to mill it when you need it, but it will be there in 30 years while flour will not. Store it in mylar bags, sealed with oxygen absorbers, in a food-grade plastic bucket. Put buckets in a cool dry place and forget about it until needed. Thanks. What is a good source for mylar bags, etc? Wheat doesn't need to be packed away with mylar and absorbers. Just pack away in food grade plastic or leave in the bag. Grains and beans don't need the whole treatment. Sorry to diagree, but I pack all my stuff in mylar with oxygen absorbers, with the exception of sugar which gets the mylar without the o2 absorbers. The wheat doesn't need them, that's true. But the bugs will munch your grain if you don't do something to kill them. Lots of things can be done, such as short-term freezing, nitrogen flush, co2 flush, tec. O2 absorbers are just easier, IMHO. As far as beans, they will get rock hard and uncookable after a year or 2 if something is not done prevent this. It's true you can grind them and use them that way after they get hard, but it's not ever been a problem for me to store them like every thing else while I'm doing a batch of this or that. |
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LDS LDS has 6 #10 cans prepacked and postage paid for $28. That's about 33lbs of wheat. They also have 7mil mylar bags, but you have to buy 200+. Any idea what a good rule of thumb might be when it comes to a storage ratio? My food/med preps include plans for 3-4 people, and I'm currently prepping for one year. |
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Wheat berries, the grain, will last many, many times longer in storage than flour––think decades with proper storage. Yes, you will have to mill it when you need it, but it will be there in 30 years while flour will not. Store it in mylar bags, sealed with oxygen absorbers, in a food-grade plastic bucket. Put buckets in a cool dry place and forget about it until needed. Thanks. What is a good source for mylar bags, etc? Wheat doesn't need to be packed away with mylar and absorbers. Just pack away in food grade plastic or leave in the bag. Grains and beans don't need the whole treatment. Sorry to diagree, but I pack all my stuff in mylar with oxygen absorbers, with the exception of sugar which gets the mylar without the o2 absorbers. The wheat doesn't need them, that's true. But the bugs will munch your grain if you don't do something to kill them. Lots of things can be done, such as short-term freezing, nitrogen flush, co2 flush, tec. O2 absorbers are just easier, IMHO. As far as beans, they will get rock hard and uncookable after a year or 2 if something is not done prevent this. It's true you can grind them and use them that way after they get hard, but it's not ever been a problem for me to store them like every thing else while I'm doing a batch of this or that. Cook your beans with a pressure cooker. If you know how to use one properly it takes a lot less fuel/energy to cook with a pressure cooker, anyway. They'll get soft no matter how hard they were to begin with. |
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Wheat berries, the grain, will last many, many times longer in storage than flour––think decades with proper storage. Yes, you will have to mill it when you need it, but it will be there in 30 years while flour will not. Store it in mylar bags, sealed with oxygen absorbers, in a food-grade plastic bucket. Put buckets in a cool dry place and forget about it until needed. Thanks. What is a good source for mylar bags, etc? Wheat doesn't need to be packed away with mylar and absorbers. Just pack away in food grade plastic or leave in the bag. Grains and beans don't need the whole treatment. Sorry to diagree, but I pack all my stuff in mylar with oxygen absorbers, with the exception of sugar which gets the mylar without the o2 absorbers. The wheat doesn't need them, that's true. But the bugs will munch your grain if you don't do something to kill them. Lots of things can be done, such as short-term freezing, nitrogen flush, co2 flush, tec. O2 absorbers are just easier, IMHO. As far as beans, they will get rock hard and uncookable after a year or 2 if something is not done prevent this. It's true you can grind them and use them that way after they get hard, but it's not ever been a problem for me to store them like every thing else while I'm doing a batch of this or that. I have wheat, oats, corn, and beans all stored in 50 gal pickle barrels since 1998. Nothing more than some DE on the top and I haven't lost anything! Other than the beans, but that was due to them not being dried enough. I have beans from 1988 that are still good. Like was said, cook in a pressure cooker to eat them. I have actually stored a lot of food over the years and a lot of what I call "old survivalist myths" still are used by people who have never done any food storage. Like heat, it dose not destroy your grains and beans. How do you think they got dried in the first place? With ice?
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LDS LDS has 6 #10 cans prepacked and postage paid for $28. That's about 33lbs of wheat. They also have 7mil mylar bags, but you have to buy 200+. Any idea what a good rule of thumb might be when it comes to a storage ratio? My food/med preps include plans for 3-4 people, and I'm currently prepping for one year. Depending on the variety it's about 60-70 calories per ounce. That's around 50,000 calories per 50 lb bag. At 2000 calories per person per day that's a few weeks to a month per person per bag. Obviously you're not going to be eating heaping bowls of wheat at every meal so a lot more thought will have to go into how much you'll need. I keep around 200 lbs on hand. |
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Could someone point out a general rule on how much wheat will do what? This is new to me and any help is appreciated. A cup of wheat makes a cup and a half of flour more of less. Figure out what you want to make and how many times you want to make it and then do the math. Make sure you store anything you need to go along with the grain so you can use it. If you plan on using some of it whole figure it like rice. Cooked wheat can be added to soups, stews, casseroles or used as a garnish. It can be used like rice to stretch just about anything. You can also sprout it to increase the nutritional value. |
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hard red winter wheat is the majority of wheat grown in this country and is OK for most things. Soft wheat has less gluten and makes a more tender crumb for things like cakes.
Semolina is the type of wheat used for pasta. I store only hard red winter wheat because there is more of it grown around me than anywhere else in the country. I literally get it right off the combine. |
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Thanks for all the great information, links, etc. I was looking at the LDS site and they listed a prepackaged deal on "Red Winter Wheat". I had no idea there were different types (although it makes perfect sense!). Is one type any better than another? My family prefers hard white for bread and such and soft white for things like biscuits and pancakes. Red winter wheat or hard red wheat makes a darker bread. Hard white while not like white bread at the store is a much milder bread. |
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Wheat berries, the grain, will last many, many times longer in storage than flour––think decades with proper storage. Yes, you will have to mill it when you need it, but it will be there in 30 years while flour will not. Store it in mylar bags, sealed with oxygen absorbers, in a food-grade plastic bucket. Put buckets in a cool dry place and forget about it until needed. Thanks. What is a good source for mylar bags, etc? Wheat doesn't need to be packed away with mylar and absorbers. Just pack away in food grade plastic or leave in the bag. Grains and beans don't need the whole treatment. Sorry to diagree, but I pack all my stuff in mylar with oxygen absorbers, with the exception of sugar which gets the mylar without the o2 absorbers. The wheat doesn't need them, that's true. But the bugs will munch your grain if you don't do something to kill them. Lots of things can be done, such as short-term freezing, nitrogen flush, co2 flush, tec. O2 absorbers are just easier, IMHO. As far as beans, they will get rock hard and uncookable after a year or 2 if something is not done prevent this. It's true you can grind them and use them that way after they get hard, but it's not ever been a problem for me to store them like every thing else while I'm doing a batch of this or that. Wheat will not germinate properly, if at all, when stored with O2 absorbers or with a CO2 purge. Something to think about, since those 5 gallon buckets won't last forever. |
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hard red winter wheat is the majority of wheat grown in this country and is OK for most things. Soft wheat has less gluten and makes a more tender crumb for things like cakes. Semolina is the type of wheat used for pasta. I store only hard red winter wheat because there is more of it grown around me than anywhere else in the country. I literally get it right off the combine. I was going to do that, but I never could catch them on the combine. I'd drive by in the morning and there was wheat, but in the afternoon, boom, no more wheat. 
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Wheat berries, the grain, will last many, many times longer in storage than flour––think decades with proper storage. Yes, you will have to mill it when you need it, but it will be there in 30 years while flour will not. Store it in mylar bags, sealed with oxygen absorbers, in a food-grade plastic bucket. Put buckets in a cool dry place and forget about it until needed. Thanks. What is a good source for mylar bags, etc? Wheat doesn't need to be packed away with mylar and absorbers. Just pack away in food grade plastic or leave in the bag. Grains and beans don't need the whole treatment. Sorry to diagree, but I pack all my stuff in mylar with oxygen absorbers, with the exception of sugar which gets the mylar without the o2 absorbers. The wheat doesn't need them, that's true. But the bugs will munch your grain if you don't do something to kill them. Lots of things can be done, such as short-term freezing, nitrogen flush, co2 flush, tec. O2 absorbers are just easier, IMHO. As far as beans, they will get rock hard and uncookable after a year or 2 if something is not done prevent this. It's true you can grind them and use them that way after they get hard, but it's not ever been a problem for me to store them like every thing else while I'm doing a batch of this or that. Wheat will not germinate properly, if at all, when stored with O2 absorbers or with a CO2 purge. Something to think about, since those 5 gallon buckets won't last forever. True, but I have wheat grown literally all around me for miles and miles. When we get down to needing to germinate my buckets, it has been over for a long time. |
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hard red winter wheat is the majority of wheat grown in this country and is OK for most things. Soft wheat has less gluten and makes a more tender crumb for things like cakes. Semolina is the type of wheat used for pasta. I store only hard red winter wheat because there is more of it grown around me than anywhere else in the country. I literally get it right off the combine. I was going to do that, but I never could catch them on the combine. I'd drive by in the morning and there was wheat, but in the afternoon, boom, no more wheat. You would not believe the frenzy that is wheat harvest unless you have experienced it. Let's just say I have friends "in the business". |
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I bought some feed grade wheat and was told it isn't fit for humans since it could have rat urine, etc. Is there anything to these claims? If anything sprouting the wheat and only eating the grass should be safe right? I don't have a mill anyway. It's true. Grain bins for human wheat have little bathrooms for the rodents to pee and poo before entering the grain bin to eat. :-) Seriously, wheat is graded and traded as a commidity based on moisture content and protein precentage. There is going to be trivial amount of contamination. Only when the wheat is bagged do labels like food grade get applied. They only hard and fast rule is that seed wheat that has been treated with fungicides (usually mixed wiht a dye) isn't safe for human consumption. Wheat sold in bags for human consumption is usually cleaner, but thats nothing you couldn't do at home. As to the guy asking for rules of thumb, the LDS church recomends 300-450 lbs/person/year for a mostly bread and beans diet. You generally want to store hard red winter wheat as it has the highest protein. Soft wheat is all we grow here in the south (tradditionally) and is used for biscuets. You might want to mix some of this in. Plus I'd add corn, oats (oat groats) and barley. In addition to flour, wheat can be cracked and eaten like oatmeal, or sprouted. |
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LDS LDS has 6 #10 cans prepacked and postage paid for $28. That's about 33lbs of wheat. They also have 7mil mylar bags, but you have to buy 200+. Any idea what a good rule of thumb might be when it comes to a storage ratio? My food/med preps include plans for 3-4 people, and I'm currently prepping for one year. for a large loaf of bread, it will take roughly a 25# pail of wheat a month for 1 loaf a day. between 2 people you could get by on that with other preps. roughly 250 lbs wheat a year per person min nice avatar
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Holy crap! I go away for a few hours and we're into Page 2!
Thanks for all the excellent information. My target will be to put away 400lbs of hard winter red and 100lbs of winter white before fall. Buying it "off the combine" sounds awesome, but I'm in ME so that's not an option. I'd like to put away some corn and oats as well. I have roughly 50lbs of oatmeal stored already, which should be a good (if short-term) start. |
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hard red winter wheat is the majority of wheat grown in this country and is OK for most things. Soft wheat has less gluten and makes a more tender crumb for things like cakes. Semolina is the type of wheat used for pasta. I store only hard red winter wheat because there is more of it grown around me than anywhere else in the country. I literally get it right off the combine. I was going to do that, but I never could catch them on the combine. I'd drive by in the morning and there was wheat, but in the afternoon, boom, no more wheat. You would not believe the frenzy that is wheat harvest unless you have experienced it. Let's just say I have friends "in the business". I need to talk to a couple of farmers I know before next year. Hopefully I'll see one of them during dove season this year, since I'm sure we'll be hunting on one or more of his properties. |
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Holy crap! I go away for a few hours and we're into Page 2! Thanks for all the excellent information. My target will be to put away 400lbs of hard winter red and 100lbs of winter white before fall. Buying it "off the combine" sounds awesome, but I'm in ME so that's not an option. I'd like to put away some corn and oats as well. I have roughly 50lbs of oatmeal stored already, which should be a good (if short-term) start. Buy a small amount and use it first. Make sure which kind your family likes before buying a bunch. We go through two or three times the hard white we do hard red and use even more soft white than hard white. There is no need spending money on one if your family likes the other better. |
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Hard red wheat is going to be a flavorful bread. It may be better for you, but if the kids won't eat it... Hard White is a good compromise. Soft white would be the least desirable. Corn bread is another option. Just make sure to store dehydrated onions. Good idea; I was thinking had red due to the protein content, but you're right. Corn: same rules apply for storage, etc? Oats? |
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Hard red wheat is going to be a flavorful bread. It may be better for you, but if the kids won't eat it... Hard White is a good compromise. Soft white would be the least desirable. Corn bread is another option. Just make sure to store dehydrated onions. Good idea; I was thinking had red due to the protein content, but you're right. Corn: same rules apply for storage, etc? Oats? Grains are grains, they all store the same. You want whole grains, nothing cracked or rolled. Shorter life spans. Good container, keep dry and in the dark, a little DE and you'll be find. Don't bother with freezing, if your grins come from Maine or another northern state, freezing will not effect the bugs, About making bread from whole wheat, when you first make a batch include white flour. Then as you keep making it cut down on the amount of white flour. Helps you to slowly get use to whole wheat bread.
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Corn has a higher oil content, and is more likely to benefit from oxygen asorbers. Otherwise, pretty much the same. Easier to grind with a grinder (corn is softer, and usually the desired result is courser meal)
BTW, be careful to keep the area where you pack the grain clean after you finish. I had a weevel outbreak in the basement because of some wheat and white rice (less then a bucket load) I left down there. |
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Holy crap! I go away for a few hours and we're into Page 2! Thanks for all the excellent information. My target will be to put away 400lbs of hard winter red and 100lbs of winter white before fall. Buying it "off the combine" sounds awesome, but I'm in ME so that's not an option. I'd like to put away some corn and oats as well. I have roughly 50lbs of oatmeal stored already, which should be a good (if short-term) start. Segois, Before you just go ahead and order all that wheat check out the lds food calcultor. Contrary to info posted above, this will give you a better idea of what the LDS recomends as a start. BUT, if you really want some good info on what and how much to store get the book Crisis Preparadness by Jack Spigareli. It'll be the best information you'll find on the subject. gk |
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Despite what others might have said, you should store your stuff in mylar and oxygen absorbers. Yes, the wheat was fine in Egypt, but I can't afford a Pyramid. We have advanced since then. You might not get as lucky as the Egyptians, you want your wheat to be ready for you when you need it, because when you NEED it, you really need it.
Bugs need oxygen to live. So remove the oxygen from your wheat. The Mormons spend LOTS of time and money researching food storage at Brigham Young University. They use oxygen absorbers. DE is just really sharp, it cuts the beetles shell and they dry out. If you had Osama bin Laden in a room and wanted to kill him, would you rather suck the air out of the room, or put razor blades in random places in the room and hope he bumps into them? |