New grain storage bin

I picked up this oil spill kit. It's a 25 gallon HDPE plastic tub with a threaded lid and water-tight gasket.

The oil spill kit was just a bunch of individually packaged organic absorbent material and 100% cotton rags and stuff, so i'm not too worried about chemicals or anything. If you can find one, this has been pretty handy.


Oh, and I've started canning my hops.

Nice. What did you pay for the oil spill kit?

Nice! How long do you think the hops will stay fresh after being canned?

The spill kits are about $130 i think. I got this one as surplus. They're made by Skillcraft, which produces pretty much everything for the Department of Defense.

I'm hoping the hops will do well for at least several months. I bought a pound of each hops, and each jar will hold 1/2 pound.

I just use Homer buckets.

Great labels for the hops.
Do you draw a vacuum on the canning jars or just cap them? Are the jars quart or pint size?

Well, when I say I got it as "surplus," I mean it fell off the back of a truck. That's why I passed on the Homer Buckets.

Those tags are actually the cheapest ones they sell at WalMart. 99 cents for 50.

The jars are 1 pint. I just canned them at room temp and the temp difference was enough to create some suction.

Great repurposing of the bucket, and I like the jar labels, but I'd be concerned about oxidation of the hops. If you haven't drawn a vacuum on the jars, then all of the oxygen that was present when you sealed them up is still in there, slowly ruining your hops. It simply contracted a bit in volume as it cooled, creating the slight suction against the lid, but there's no less oxygen in them. It's the same oxygen - just colder.

I'd be very interested in hearing how those hops fared after a few months of such storage. Under the conditions you outlined, I'd estimate they'd be "fresh" for no more than a few months, tops.

Thanks for the info. If I purge with CO2 can I get some more life out of them?

It would be better for sure, but I think the ideal storage solution would be to use a vacuum sealer to either pull a vacuum on the jars (with a lid adapter) or seal them in the special oxygen-barrier vacuum seal shrink wrap pouches. I guess it depends on your timeline. If you're planning on using them in the next couple of months, it wouldn't make much of a difference. But if you're planning on bulk storing them for a year or more, I'd consider a more long-term storage solution.

Even just moving them from the fridge to the freezer should slow any oxidation considerably, if you change nothing else.

Cool. Good to know! I'll most likely be using them within 2-3 months.