How to Package Dry Foods in Mylar Bags for Long Term Storage

mylar bags are an inexpensive way to package grains and legumes in your own home without any special equipment and it lasts for up to 25 years hi we're the Provident Preppers today we're gonna spend about an hour taking this dried food behind us and packaging them into mylar bags for our long-term storage this simple change can make the shelf life go from about 2 years to about 25 all this food behind us will provide our family of basic calories for two and a half months join us and we'll show you how it's done it's a party mylar bags can be a great way to package your dry goods for long-term storage between our 90-day challenge so we did last year and the cove at 19 we've used a bunch of our storage and as these products came available again we've been repackaging and restocking our supplies some foods are great candidates for short-term storage and that should be rotated through quickly others can be good to use in long-term storage such as dried goods things like dried beans white rice wheat oats pasta sugar and dehydrated or freeze-dried fruits and vegetables these items that you're gonna store in your long-term storage need to be less than 10% moisture foods that have higher moisture content such as granola or raisins or anything where there's moisture should not be packaged this way whole grains will maintain the quality for much longer than anything that's ground for instance we can store 30 years or so but flour only has about a 5 year shelf-life whole corn stores longer than cornmeal rolled oats will store longer than oat flour and dry beans will store longer than bean flour that doesn't mean that you can't package bean flour or oat flour cornmeal or white flour in a mylar bag it just means that your shelf life will be shortened in comparison to the whole grain all mylar bags are not created equal so it's important that you're a good consumer and understand exactly what you're getting mylar bags are available in a variety of thicknesses and qualities typically you get what you paid for the two mylar bags that are next to each other here the one on the left is actually a mylar bag that is designed to be able to be vacuum sealed and you can't do that with all mylar bags but it's only a 4 mil whereas the bag on the right is a 7 mil for food storage and we'll explore that a little bit more this is a Mylar blanket that we took out of our emergency supplies and open it up as you notice the quality just wasn't there I shouldn't have bought a cheap dollar store Mylar blanket and on the same note make sure that the mylar bags that you purchase for your long-term food supply are good quality so that when you open it up in 25 years you are not highly disappointed mylar pouches or bags that you use to package your long-term food storage should typically be between 5 and 7 mils this gives you the greatest protection for those valuable food storage that you are putting inside that bag mylar bags can be purchased in the one gallon size and we find that those are highly convenient we recommend that you purchase those mylar bags or pouches that are between 5 and 7 mils if you're planning on using them for your long-term food supply these are 5 gallon mylar bags that you place inside of a plastic bucket the combination of the two provides an optimal storage life we recently came across these vacuum sealable mylar bags you cannot take a regular mylar bag and seal those in your vacuum sealer but these are specially made for that and they did a really great job they are only 4 mils thick but they seem to be very good quality and I think they'll hold up fine as is the case with most things it takes a little while to kind of work out the kinks and figure out the optimal way to do that we started out filling the bags to full which meant that we had to hold the vacuum sealer up or the grain would spill out but once we got the quantity right in the bag now we could lay them down and we had no problem at all we are frequently asked if it's ok to vacuum seal food storage in regular VAT in sealed bags while that will work you will get better results by using a mylar vacuum sealed bag because the mylar vacuum seal bags are 4,500 percent more effective at blocking oxygen penetration than the plastic vacuum sealed bags we were excited when we came across these bags because it's a great way not to have to use the oxygen absorbers and still have a really good result mylar bags do a great job of protecting against light moisture and oxygen and these vacuum sealed bags are also puncture resistant not Road resistant but puncture resistant when you're looking at using oxygen absorbers or vacuum sealing quite frankly oxygen absorbers are the ideal because they remove all of the oxygen from the container they work by chemical reaction there is an iron powder in the packet the reacts with the oxygen causing the iron to rust and that removes the oxygen once the oxygen is gone from the container that reaction stops the packets will continue to work until the iron is gone which is why you need to make sure that you purchase the right size oxygen absorber for the container that you intend to use it in why do we use the oxygen absorbers because it protects against insects that may have been in your grains when you package them insects require oxygen to be able to live and by depriving them of that oxygen you are depriving them of life which is good when you're talking about it in my food storage it actually preserves the quality of food by allowing the food to be in an oxygen-free environment and it prevents the growth of aerobic pathogens make sure that when you are storing sugar in a mylar bag you don't put an oxygen absorber in there because that will actually turn that sugar into a brick if you end up with more oxygen absorbers than you need at the moment make sure you seal them up quickly so that they will stay viable in this case I took the extra oxygen absorbers and sealed them in a vacuum seal bag another option is this mylar bag clip which just seals that bag up tight mechanically and keeps them viable or you can just put them into accounting jar and seal that lid it's kind of funny because about a half an hour later you'll hear this pump and you can tell that it's done its job and all the oxygen is used up but those the reaction has stopped and so those oxygen absorbers will be good to use when you need them the next time most packages of oxygen absorbers come with an indicator on it as you can see there are those three dots on this indicator and that just tells you that this package has never been opened if you look at the bottom of that canning jar you can see that the little eyeball indicator that came with those has turned a purplish which means that that package has been opened now those oxygen absorbers inside that canning jar are still good but it just indicates that it has been initially opened as we mentioned before it's important that you choose the right size oxygen absorber for your need obviously the smaller size won't work in a five-gallon bucket so you need to make sure that you size your oxygen absorbers accordingly for one Yellin you need between 300 and 600 cc's typically what we put in there is a 500 but we also sometimes use the 300 you can use larger oxygen absorbers in a smaller container for instance we could use that in a half gallon container and wouldn't have any problems because remember that reaction stops when the oxygen has been consumed for a five gallon bucket typically you need between 2,000 and 3,000 CCS to make sure that you get all that oxygen it typically takes about four hours for the oxygen absorber to complete its work when you first fill the bag the outside of the mylar is nice and smooth and it's hard to see what's really inside that bag however a few hours later it shrinks up due to that oxygen being absorbed and you can see the indentations of whatever the food is that you have inside of that bag if you're a professional you're gonna use a clam shell heat sealer or an impulse sealer to take care of stealing these mylar bags but at our house we use what we know best and in this case it's flat irons or hair straighteners you can also use a typical clothes iron if you're using the five gallon mylar bags the first step is to put that bag inside of a bucket the next step is to fill that mylar bag with whatever product you're using and usually this is best done if you've got two people to help one to hold the bag and want to fill here we're filling the bag with pinto beans but we want to note that because of everything that's going on the food has become a little bit more difficult to obtain and 25 pound bags of pinto beans were hard to come across so we have a combination of 8 pound and 5 pound bags and yeah and we did have a big 25 pound bag but we're using all different sizes to be able to fill these bags to maximize the amount of food you can get in then you want to shake the bag and let it settle down and make sure you leave a little room at the top in this case we got a little overzealous and we filled the bag too full which means that we just had to dig some out make sure you leave enough room at the top that the extra-mile our bag can be tucked down in and the lid can be snapped on tight make sure you label the bag this sounds like a no-brainer but it is so easy to forget which bucket has what in it and then in your food storage you have mystery buckets or mystery bags of food so take the time and before you seal it right on that mylar bag what is inside when you have all your containers filled then we open the oxygen absorbers and add them to each package and time is of the essence here right because those oxygen absorbers as soon as they're in the air they're starting to do their job so push the air out as much as you can and then seal the mylar bag we start by tacking the bag in the middle and then at the quarter and three quarter points once that is done and the bag is nice and flat then we conceal the entire top and again this works better when you're doing it as a family or when you have another person there to help hold it after you get that seal just give it a little squeeze to make sure there's not air coming out anywhere that you've got a good tight seal then you push the entire bag down into the bucket so that you can get the lid on and now label the top of that bucket before you ever seal it so that you know what's inside and when we seal we put exactly like what kind of rice it was the poundage and the date and the reason we put the poundage on each of the buckets is because it makes it easier to calculate how many pounds of food storage we have in our family our goal is 300 pounds of grain per person and 60 pounds of beans and now for the fun part you get to seal the top of the bucket with the rubber mallet nice and tight with the smaller pouches the process is basically the same we start by labeling the pouches and then just begin filling and go through this same process you can use a typical clothes iron to seal these pouches we want to make sure we begin with some type of a non flammable surface we just chose to use a scrap piece of wood and then you take the mylar back top and you flatten it out you want to tack it in the center and at the quarter and three quarter marks and then just take that iron and seal all the way across the top and then check it by just gently squeezing and see if there's any air that can escape and if not you're good to go if you feel there's a little part of the seal that's not quite right just send that iron down it again and tell you get it nice and tight okay I think this is hilarious you can seal the top of these pouches with a hair straightener or a flat iron right and it's funny to me to watch how the boys are doing this John does not hold this hair straightener in any kind of a feminine way it has never been used in his hand to straighten hair that's for sure and then the girls are very delicate about the way that they go about it and yet the job gets done perfectly by both just different styles it is critical to understand that these bags are not rodent proof as you can see in this picture this bag was given to us by a friend of ours and they had packaged their food in these mylar pouches put them in cardboard boxes and put them in the back of a closet several years later when they were doing some cleaning they realized that their food was gone the rodents had gotten into these bags very easily and had totally destroyed their food supply the way you prevent this is to store these pouches in a bucket or a tote something that is a little more rodent resistant than just the bags themselves and that storage is really important but let me give you a little tip as soon as you put that oxygen absorber in the back these are very pliable and it's easy to be able to tuck them into the tote or a big metal garbage can or whatever you want to put them in but once that four hours has passed they become hard kind of like a brick and it's hard to tuck them in without wasting a lot of space so make sure that you get busy and tuck them where you want to be right away one of the things I love about mylar bags is that you can cut that back and create any size of bag that you want to just by sealing the ends we don't use very many chickpeas at a time and so it only makes sense to put those in much smaller bags for our family however pinto beans need to be in the five-gallon bucket because we use a ton of pinto beans another great thing about mylar bags is that they are reusable once you've used the product in that bag you can clean it and dry a thoroughly and those bags can be used again obviously they're going to be a little bit smaller each time but you can still make use of this Preppers can find all sort of creative ways to build caches or supplies of tools or food that they might need during an emergency but sometimes it's hard to keep those supplies safe from environmental conditions we'll put a link in the description to discount mylar bags this weapon can be easily protected in a cache by simply putting it into the mylar bag with the desiccant packets and the oxygen packets and then when you need it it's been protected from environmental conditions as preparation we come up with all kinds of fun ways to use these seeds store really well in mylar bags just put the seeds or the seed packets inside do not use an oxygen absorber and seal it and you've created this wonderful light and moisture barrier that will help protect those seeds and help them store a lot longer in your seed vault so get creative with your use of mylar bags the shelf life of foods inside of a mylar bag varies depending on what type of food you have in it your and your storage conditions it is so important that your foods are stored in a cool dry dark and protected area our friend forgot the protected part and so the was destroyed by those mice the cooler the temperature that you store dry good that the longer they will remain viable this is some flower that was stored in a mylar bag for 20 years when I came across this in our storage the flower was very kind of grainy and it really wasn't palatable it just wasn't edible to a standard that I was comfortable with now if we were starving to death we probably would have eaten it however if this had been wheat stored in this bag it would have been perfectly fine so what you store makes a big difference but overall you should be able to obtain 20 to 25 years shelf life in a mylar bag of many of the foods that you store food storage needs to be a family project it was so much fun to pull out this photo of our four little wins doing the food storage right there they helped us actually package it and yes the handwriting on the top isn't some of it wasn't even legible okay but it was darling and they felt such a part of it and we've taken these kids from the time they were very young clear tuned our that we're ready to launch them and they know how to store food they know how to depend on it in fact Kenny made a really sweet comment when we were doing all of this knowing that she's going away to college this year she said mom if things get bad can I come back here and eat this food storage and I couldn't even believe that was such a question like yes of course that's why we have it but our family has found such peace and security in knowing that our pantry is full that no matter what happens in life we have something that we can eat for dinner and we're gonna be okay and we encourage you to make this into a family event because it's good for all of us we invite you to check out the post that this video was made from how to package dry foods in mylar bags for long-term storage it has a lot more detail and a lot of good information check out our video long-term food storage for lots of information about how to build your program another video that might interest you is how long will ye sliced obviously that yeast will turn grains into really delicious bread so check that out packaging dried foods and mylar bags really isn't as difficult as you may have imagined I'm tired and I hurt all over one thing that you might want to consider is that even though these bags are insect proof they're not very rodent proof they don't provide hardly any barrier so you might want to consider storing them in a plastic tote or bucket and that's not a question of the day what experience do you have Packaging dry goods in mylar bags do you have any helpful hints you can share with our viewers comment below and thanks for being part of the solution [Applause] [Music]

Channel: The Provident Prepper

Views: 35,657

Rating: 4.9559836 out of 5

Keywords: Prepper, TEOTWAWKI, SHTF, The Provident Prepper, Food Storage, Emergency Food Supply, Mylar Pouches, Mylar Bags, Heat Sealing Mylar Bags, Long Term Food Storage, Wheat, Rice, Beans

Id: SDAwCCYbjvc

Length: 18min 25sec (1105 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 16 2020