Storing Wheat Berries in Vacuum Sealed Food Saver Bags?

I store my grains in food grade plastic pails with Gamma Lids and have never had a problem.  Had some wheat stored for maybe 10 years and no problem....A 5 gallon pail will hold 50 lbs of grain.  I store my grains in our basement. Buckets are about 5.00 each and lids about the same at restaurant supply stores.  Can be bought off line but more expensive.

I imagine you can use the food saver but it seems like a lot of work and more difficult to store - bags more prone to being torn etc.

Janet

I do the same as Janet - store in tightly covered food grade plastic pails.  We go thru the wheatberries fast enough that it's reallly not worth the time and effort to do otherwise. 

The best storage method really depends on how long you actually intend to store the item. If you're looking at the possibility of 10-30 years, I would recommend using mylar bags instead of regular foodsaver bags as they are even more airtight and help guard as oxidation and incidental sunlight as well. You can vacuum out the oxygen and seal them in your FoodSaver, or you can use an oxygen absorber to remove every last trace of O2 and just use the FoodSaver to seal them. As long as the berries are completely dry when they go in, stay dry, relatively cool, and out of the sunlight they will last "indefinitely". If you're packing on a humid day or aren't sure if your berries are completely dry, you can always put a desiccant pack in the pouch for added protection. Then pack all your pre-measured bags of grain into 5-6 gallon buckets with gamma lids (any gasketed lid would work, but gamma lids are very convenient).

Since I live in the bush, I store a lot of dry bulk staples in usable sizes of ziploc mylar bags and use my FoodSaver to vacuum out the air with the attachment tube, but don't heat seal them just zipper them since I intend to use them within a year or two. Not heat sealing them makes them more reusable since you don't have to cut them open.  Then I store a variety of these pouches in "monthly" buckets with gamma lids. The added benefit is that I can use this method to store all the dry ingredients (dry milk, powdered eggs, shortening powder, yeast, sugar, baking soda, seasonings, etc) for a recipe in small pouches within a larger pouch of the main ingredient (whole grains, pasta, dry potatoes, etc) and then only need to add water, oil, honey or other wet ingredients when I prepare it... much more cost effective and customizable than the commercial box or "camping/hiking" meals.

I tend to keep the regular FoodSaver bags for use in the freezer or for foods I know will be consumed in a year or less since they aren't as hermetic for truly long-term storage. They also come in handy for packing dry ingredients for the larger mylar pouches, especially if the ingredient in question is liable to poke a hole in a normal Ziploc bag.

You need to weigh your three cups of flour and make bags of that weight of grain. Three cups of grain will make more than three cups of flour. When I was first testing the idea of milling all my own flour, I found that 1 cup of grain weighed 7 oz and one cup of flour weighed 5.25 oz. That was when I decided to start baking by weights. I only wanted to mill what I needed, because at the beginning I was using a manual mill. I've since graduated to an electric mill, but I still bake by weights.

Like Janet, I keep my whole grain in plastic buckets with gamma lids. I order grain in 25- or 50-pound bags, depending on what is available. I've never kept any for as long as Janet has, but I've had no problem with rancidity or other spoilage. I keep my buckets in the living area of my house, near the laundry area and the door to the garage. So far, at least, mice have not detected the presence of food inside those buckets. I keep an eye out for any signs that they have, because mice can chew through plastic quite handily.

Any new updates to this thread? 

I finally got a new supply of wheat berries. I had some old stock, about 14 years old and trashed most of it thinking I'd buy fresh. But the survivalists had bought up all the local supply and there was none to be had. Luckily I chanced upon some berries a couple hours away and bought 350 pounds.

I had stored my berries in food grade pails. No special this or that. Worked fine. Made bread after 12 years with some and it tasted fine. I had kept about 25 pounds of the old berries to see how long it ages and still bakes OK bread,

If you want to vacuum pack your berries, you have to do it in a special way. You stand the bag upright, so the berries don't fall out, and you use a small size vacuum sealer handheld above the upright bag. I did a few bags like that to test out the technique. But generally, I just keep the berries in a pail.