5 gal container question for rice, sugar, flour and milk

[barfife]

I have just gotten my mylar equipment and buckets. I have watched the videos on line and I am good on grains and lentils, but still have a couple of questions.

I have 10 and 25 lb sacks of rice, sugar and flour and boxes of powered milk that I want to package for long term. Must/should I remove the rice, sugar and flour from their factory bags and the milk from their boxes before packing them in mylar?

I am also wanting to do smaller packages to have to hand out to people passing through. Any suggestions would be useful.

Any additional advice on packing sugar would be welcomed.

Hope that these are not redundant questions but I have not found answers on line yet.

Thanks
Barfife

[610Alpha]

no worries better to ask and know. I have not packed rice myself but I don't see why you couldn't pack it just like you did the grains. You can put it in the mylar bags with an O2 absorber and seal it up, you can use smaller bags if you want to so that you can hand them out or whatever.

Unless you can fit those 10 & 25 pound bags into your mylar bags you will have to open them up and put the contents into your mylar bags. Don't know if 25 lbs of sugar will fit in your mylar bag or not.

Flour won't last as long compared to the grain, so be sure to rotate out the flour.

I am planning on doing 1 gallon bags of various items and putting them in a 5 gal bucket and hand out the bucket. 1 gal bag of rice, another grain, legume, maybe a gallon bag of freeze dried prepared meal, etc.

hope this helps and i am sure someone else will chime in.

Also check out this thread under the basics section:
DIY food storage basics, ask questions, get answers, etc.

[Matt In Oklahoma]

LD3 says remove the original packaging cause it desnt last long. I cut out the nutrition and instructions stuff and throw it on top of the mylar bag after i seal them so maybe, just maybe it is readable later on.
Sugar - throw it in the bag squeeze out as much air as possible then seal. no O2 absorber.

[claymore]

barlife, do you have those websites with the videos ? I've only got dial-up but I could get someone to put it on zip drives.

[miked2345]

Ditto on what Elittle said about flour... You might want to Google "Flour shelf life"
From what I've read, flour won't last long term, even sealed in mylar with an Oxy absorber.

[barfife]

The videos I watched were produced by our own Lowdown3.
It is in 3 parts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW7_cTn6YpE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PylQCiFBtH4&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfcWNOWUit8&feature=related

Also by lowndown3:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPH1ZfSfSaY&feature=related

There are several more on youtube that your friend can download.

[Rmplstlskn]

I have 10 and 25 lb sacks of rice, sugar and flour and boxes of powered milk that I want to package for long term. Must/should I remove the rice, sugar and flour from their factory bags and the milk from their boxes before packing them in mylar?

+1 on the smaller mylar bags for sugar and flour (short shelf life as stated previously)... How much sugar can one go through, so small are the better... Faster, easier rotation.

I would leave the powdered milk in the boxes if they look robust and well-made, as it was packed in a CLEAN environment and you opening them and dumping them in some other bag may add contaminents... Milk is not like grains and rice. You need to be more careful of contamination. Just stack them in a bucket and seal it.

Have fun... I'm thinking maybe we all here can have a mylar packing tools LOANER program where we loan out the equipment to those who need it, as most of us do not do enough packing to justify a nice & expensive mylar bag heat sealer, etc... And if one breaks it they replace it...

I know I am not happy with the sealer I used last time, but I cannot justify a $80 heat sealer...

Rmpl

[barfife]

Thanks for all the replies and the advice.

[miked2345]

Mylar bag heat sealer? Huh... I didn't know they made small ones for home use. I just put the edge of the bag on a 2 x 4 and ran over it with my wife's iron. I made a seal about an inch wide. Seems to work pretty well, didn't hurt the iron either.

[610Alpha]

Yep they make mylar heat sealers for home use, clam shell heat sealer, you can find them on the LDS catalog website as well as many others. I saw Protus (i think it was him or LD3) use a level that had ridges and an iron. The ridges actually created multiple seals instead of just one seal like a 2 x 4 would.