I missed my gravity on my NEIPA by about 10 points yesterday. Long story short, I was telling my buddy that we should have just added some DME to the batch to compensate for not setting the rollers right on my grain mill. I don't have DME in my house. I rarely use it. By the time I get back to a half (full) bag, I find it covered in dust and it's as hard as a hockey puck. I'm wondering how you guys store your DME. I'm tempted to try to put it through the Food Saver and vacuum seal it. I'm not buying it a terracotta bear though.
That DME was exposed to moisture (humidity in the air). DME needs to be stored to minimize contact with air; a Food Saver Vacuum seal would do this. In the past of have stored DME in the original bag by squeezing out excess air and then 'sealing' the bag with binder clips. I then placed it within a Ziplock Freezer Bag where I squeezed out excess air and closed that bag. This worked for me in the past. Needless to say but using a Food Saver Vaccuum seal is more optimum. Cheers!
The key is keeping the dme dry, which means storing airtight. I imagine vacuum sealing could work, assuming the very light powder doesn't interfere with the seal.
I buy DME in bulk and separate into a few different volumes and vacuum seal it for later use. I do a few bags in 1 pound incraments, a few in 1 ounce increments, a few 4 ounce incraments and a few in 8 ounce incraments. That way I always have starter DME on hand in various volumes pretty close to what I need and also have a few separate pounds in case I need to adjust for missed gravity.
I've never had a problem with vacuum sealing DME. Just make the bags a bit bigger then you think they need to be.
Why not weight out a bit of that DME 'rock' and boil it until it melts? I think I've done that in the past to use for priming sugar.
Missing your OG by 10 points is not the end of the world in a lot of situations...especially a NEIPA if you've used a lot of flaked oats and wheat and hopbursted. Maybe?
I roll the bag and use a bag clip - the alligator looking things. Normally don't have much issue with it. The couple times I have, I just put it in hot water to dissolve down.
Get a food grade bucket (those orange Home Depot buckets aren't food grade) for bulk storage...2 food grade buckets will store around 55lbs of DME for as long as you need to. If you're an extract brewer only, it saves so much to buy in bulk if you can.
I don't know how long term this storage would be but I use a 3 pound bag in about 6 months for yeast starters and keep it in a ziploc bag. Never had it harden up!
I use my "extra dme" for starters. I try to cold crash and decant the top layers so the stale DME is a minuscule addition to the product I'm making. Its stored in a ziplock within a plastic bin. Now that I type this, I am reminded that I should toss what I have and replace it.
