I've been keeping my grains, extract, yeast, and hops in the fridge until I'm ready to use them. All sealed up to prevent oxygenation. I just bought a fridge for controlling fermentation and it has a lot of extra space (I'm just brewing 1 and 2 gal right now). The fridge is hooked up to an inkbird and will usually be kept in the 60s range. I'd like to move my extract, grain, and hops (I'll keep yeasties in the constant fridge unless others think otherwise) into the ~60 fridge. I will ensure everything is sealed well, but I'm curious if anyone has advice on how long these might stay fresh sealed at 60 vs 37? Also, thoughts on the yeast would be appreciated. I have both liquid smack packs and dry. Thank you!
They won’t stay as fresh. I store hops in the freezer. And yeast in the fridge. Grains can be ambient in the garage.
To re-enforce what @Prep8611 stated: Hops - Freezer temperature Yeast - Refrigerator (e.g., 40 degrees F) temperature Liquid Extract - Refrigerator (e.g., 40 degrees F) temperature Dry Extract - basement temperature (and dry) Grains - basement temperature (and dry). It is best to store grains in some sort of container to mitigate exposure to humidity. Some folks like to use dry dog food containers:
ECHO...echo...(echo): Hops - frozen and vacuum sealed Yeast - fridge LME - fridge DME - room temp and sealed Whole grains - room temp and sealed Recently read about shelf life of whole grains when properly stored: Base malt - about 6 months Specialty grains - 12-18 months It might be overkill, but I vacuum seal almost all my dry goods if they won't be used for a while and then they go in a bucket with a gamma lid, similar to the pic by @JackHorzempa . That includes grains, DME, vanilla beans, coconut flakes, dried peppers....you get he gist. All hops are vacuum sealed immediately if I open the package and don't use them all, or if the factory seal is suspect. Buckets and gamma lids (sold separately) are available at Lowe's and probably Home Depot. Oxygen can promote staling, humidity can promote mold.
The only base malt I purchase in bulk (55 lb. bags) is Weyermann Pilsner Malt and the best by dates on the bags is > 6 months from my date of purchase. When I get that bag home I immediately transfer the bag to two Home Depot buckets (with lids) and place food grade plastic bags as 'liners' within the bucket. As the malt is utilized I squeeze out the air from the bags and 'seal' them with a rubber band. The buckets are stored cool in my basement. With this method the malt has stayed good for an extended time (even beyond the date printed on the bag). Cheers!
Wow that is pretty quick for base malt ! I have a sack or two coming up on that mark... I store in air tight gamma bins and live in a dry climate, so I feel like they are still tasting great. I'm not sure I'd be able to for sure know if my base malt was starting to stale. At the end of the brewing process it'd sure be hard to pin it down to that! I buy my malt in a club buy and get sacks of Gambrinus base malts for ~25$ Canadian (which is about 19$ US!) So I tend to stock up when I can! Where were you reading about shelf life @riptorn ?
BIG CAVEAT: I am not a malt shelf-life expert! When I attend NHC/HomebrewCon events I enjoy strolling through the exhibitor’s hall to chat with the various venders. During one event I got into a long conversation with one of the vendors (Great Western Malting – maybe?) and he educated me that when malt gets old it can get “slack” (maybe other aspects too?). My memory of this discussion is that when malt gets “slack” it picks up moisture (e.g., from humidity) and he stated that if you chew on the malt you could determine if the malt it too old. Needless to say you would need experience here (which I personally lack). Given that you store your malt in “air tight gamma bins and live in a dry climate” your malt should be fairly resistant to going slack. Here is a link on the Pro Brewer website which relates to this topic: https://discussions.probrewer.com/f...vailable-for-sponsorship/3259-malt-shelf-life One of the posts in the above thread: “Do a taste test. If it tastes good, it is good.” Cheers!
It was in the closing comments of an undated BYO article by Kevin Kawa: "Finally, a quick note on storage of base malts. Because base malts are not as highly-kilned as other specialty malts, they are usually not able to be stored as long as specialty malts. With proper storage, base malts can start to see loss of quality and flavor after 6 months. Specialty malts, on the other hand, can start to see loss of flavor and quality after 12–18 months" https://byo.com/article/understanding-base-malt" The authors phrase "....start to see loss of quality and flavor" might be more accurate than my use of "shelf life".
All my grains are in the barn in containers, not air tight. My method is usually to buy enough base malt for 3 months, specialty grains for 6 months. Seems to work for me.
