By brewing your own alcohol instead of buying it at the store, you can save a ton of money. But once you get a taste for this hobby, and you know you want to keep doing it, you can really crank up the savings by getting your ingredients in bulk. Of course, unless you’re brewing every day, you probably need to figure out how to store it without letting it go bad. That’s what I’ve been researching lately – I’m trying to get my facts straight so I can start buying in bulk. I’ve talked about storing yeast for reuse in the past, but what about grain?

Whole, unmilled, malted grains can be safely stored for several years under the right conditions. Bulk grain should be stored in sealed, opaque, airtight and watertight containers that cannot be breached by vermin. Ideally, keep in a cool, dry, climate-controlled part of the home, away from sunlight.

Grain is probably the easiest ingredient to buy in bulk and store long-term, because unmilled/uncrushed grain is very hardy. With a little bit of consideration to set up the right storage environment, it can last for a really long time. Some (in a professional setting) have reported successful grain storage of 14 years or more!

There are a few considerations when it comes to storing grain:

• Keeping pests and vermin out. This is by far the most important consideration. Ants, cockroaches, rodents, and many other critters are attracted to your grain, and will stop at nothing to get at it. They can get into most things, and once they’re in, they’ll chew on and poop in your grain, forcing you to have to toss the whole thing out.
• Moisture. For long-term storage, grain must be kept dry. Any amount of moisture can permeate all of the grain in a container, causing souring. Sour grain isn’t the worst thing in the world (it’s not good), but too much moisture can go beyond that and cause mold – which will ruin all of it.
• Sunlight. Not the most damaging thing, but light will degrade the grain, shortening its storage life. This is easily combated by using opaque containers.
• Heat. Huge temperature swings or incredibly hot summers can also degrade the grain and shorten its storage life, although this is a fairly minor concern. If you can’t store your containers out of the elements, it may not last quite as long, but it will still last for a long time.

The Best Containers for Bulk Storage of Grain

Regardless of where you keep your grain, the most important thing to consider is what the grain is stored in. If you get the right containers that solve all of the problems listed above, you don’t have to worry as much about the other aspects of how you’re storing them.

The best solution on the market right now is Vittles Vaults. This is a product tailor-made for our purposes! It’s actually meant for bulk storage of pet food, but dry pet food has essentially the same exact storage requirements as dry grain.

Vittles Vaults take it a step further than a standard food-grade bucket. The lids of the containers use a special double-gasket locking seal that is intended to be perfectly watertight and to keep critters out. It also comes in a variety of sizes, so you can store different amounts for different kinds of grain.

However, Vittles Vaults are quite pricey, and if you plan to store many different types of grain in bulk, the cost can add up very quickly.

Thankfully, the same company that produces Vittles Vaults also has these Gamma Lids. These lids use the same locking mechanism as Vittles Vaults, but can be used with a regular food-grade bucket. You can buy the lids for much cheaper than a Vittles Vault, especially if you purchase several at a time.

(I’ve linked the Amazon listing that has 5 of them, getting you a bit of a discount – but you can buy them in singles or in up to 12-packs)

Feel free to use any standard food-grade bucket, but I’ve read reports of the seal not being as good on those, and pests or moisture getting in and ruining all of the grain in the container.

The Optimal Grain Storage for Homebrewers

Perfect storage of your bulk grain solves all of the problems listed above: keeping your grain away from vermin, moisture, sunlight and heat.

It starts with the proper containers, which I’ve already discussed. If you don’t use proper containers for storage, anything else you do is simply not going to work as well.

You probably don’t need to worry about optimal storage. Most homebrewers don’t achieve that. We aren’t professionals. Most of us don’t plan our lives around brewing, or have a dedicated brewing section of the house, or even a dedicated area for brewing equipment and ingredients.

However, it’s worth discussing the perfect storage solution before talking about the more realistic options.

If you can, you should store your containers of grain in a climate-controlled room of your house, away from sunlight, in a place where you will not enter often (to keep the lights off, and not allow sunlight in as you come and go).

This would probably be a closet of some kind. An even better option would be a dedicated refrigerator of some kind, but having one big enough for true bulk storage would probably mean something like a walk-in, which is unreasonable for most homebrewers.

Any temperature above 70°F can contribute to pest activity according to the experts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Cooling your storage area to temperatures below 70°F will greatly reduce the chance of pests getting at your grain, with temperatures below 60°F being ideal.

Your air conditioning unit for you home will also actively remove moisture from the air, lessening the chance that it will get into your storage containers.

Storing Grain in a Garage, Shed, or Other Location

As homebrewers, we don’t typically have the convenience of storing our bulk grain in a special closet we’ve set aside for that specific purpose. But that doesn’t mean we can’t take advantage of the cost savings of buying in bulk!

This is actually the main reason I started researching this. We recently moved into a pretty big house, but my wife really wants me to get my brewing stuff out of the house and into the garage. Thankfully, we do have a garage fridge and freezer for things like hops and yeast, but grain storage is a bit different.

So I will need to keep my grain in our non-climate-controlled garage.

And I live in the south (South Carolina, to be exact), where summers are effing hot (and humid!) and seem to last for like 80% of the year.

Thankfully, heat is the least of our concerns when it comes to long-term grain storage. Exposing your grain to heat is not ideal, but it’s also not a deal-breaker.

The key is to properly mitigate the other concerns, primarily vermin and moisture.

Using the proper storage containers (above) will go a long way towards taking care of this. This may just be anecdotal, but many homebrewers online have said that they have no issue storing grain in their hot garages or sheds as long as it is stored properly in the right containers.

In the garage or shed, grain should be stored up, off of the floor. Keep it on a shelf or similar, at least a few inches from the ground. This places an extra obstacle for pests (particularly rodents). It doesn’t stop them completely, but makes it less likely that they will find the grain in the first place.

There are some extra considerations that you should think about with grain storage in general, but are especially important if you’re storing your grain outside.

Extra Considerations

Here are a few things that homebrewers often don’t think about when it comes to grain use and/or storage. Not following these steps won’t ruin your grain, but you can really mitigate any issues just by taking a few extra steps towards being careful.

• Clean your grain storage area thoroughly and often. Sweep up or vacuum under the shelf your containers are on. Any amount of grain dust (or similar) will signal to pests where the grain is, and they are more likely to try and get into your containers.
• Store your grain away from where you brew. Brewing is messy. You can get grain dust everywhere, or even spill sticky wort on the ground. This will attract pests! Furthermore, boiling wort creates steam, which will increase moisture in the air.
• Measure out your grain away from your storage area. Scooping out the grain can cause spills, and if not cleaned up thoroughly and immediately it can signal to pests where the grain is. Even just opening the container can kick up grain dust. It’s best to carry your container over to where you brew, which should be in a separate location, before opening it and portioning out your grain.
• Use those (food-grade) silica bags that come with everything. These can help combat moisture by absorbing any that gets into the container. Fill a hop sock with them and just toss them into the grain bin. You can also reuse/revitalize them once they start going bad just by popping them into the oven for an hour or two. 
• Keep only unmilled, uncrushed grain in storage. More on this below, but you should only purchase whole malted grain for bulk storage, and get your own mill. Only mill what you need for the brew day. If there is any milled grain left over, vacuum seal or store in a ziploc bag, ideally in the refrigerator or freezer. Crushed/Milled grain is more prone to oxidation, and thus far more susceptible to heat, light, and moisture – it goes bad much more quickly. If stored with the whole grain, it will shorten its storage life.

Buying Grain in Bulk for Homebrewing

So how exactly do you go about getting the grain in the first place? And what should you buy?

Purchasing grain in bulk is super easy. You should be able to get it wherever you’re currently buying all of your homebrewing stuff – just put in a bigger order. Usually, as with most things, if your order is above a certain size, you get a huge discount by volume or weight.

For example, at the moment I’m writing this, on MoreBeer.com, 1lb of 2-row malt is $2.29 per pound, but if you buy 10lb, it’s $15.99 for the whole thing (or only $1.60 per pound). That’s a 30% discount!

Another tip for getting an even steeper discount is to make buddies in the industry. Spend some time at local breweries and get to know the workers – particularly the owner. Then, once you’re close enough with them, ask to piggyback on their next grain order. They buy in such large quantities that they usually get wholesale prices, which can be a fraction of the cost any homebrewer can find.

You should try to keep large amounts of the base malts you use often. For most homebrewers, this is probably 2-row and pilsner malt, maybe a couple of others. You can probably fill a large bucket or Vittles Vault with these and you’ll find yourself using it if you brew decently often.

For other malts that are used often, but in smaller amounts, such as your caramel or roasted malts, you can get away with slightly smaller orders and smaller containers.

However, for most brewers, you’re probably not using specialty malt very fast. For those, you might put in much smaller orders and keep a much more reasonable amount around. You don’t need to purchase a container for each and every one of these malts; rather, you can keep them all in the same bucket or Vittles Vault, and just seal them up separate from each other with a vacuum sealer (ideal) or a ziploc bag.

You can get away with ordering what you need as you go, meaning you do not need to make one massive order with everything you might ever want. Need 10lb of pale malt for an IPA? Go ahead and put in a 50lb order and keep some for the future. What about a few ounces of roasted malt for a Stout? Get a few pounds instead.

Conclusion

The keys to remember with storing grain are to minimize or prevent vermin and moisture, and to a lesser extent, sunlight and heat. This can be obtained just by using the right airtight, watertight, opaque containers.

Ordering grain in bulk and storing it is not that hard. Much easier than some other ingredients, like yeast!

And with the discounts you can get from ordering in bulk (particularly your grain and hops) you can really save a ton on a per-recipe basis. You can be drinking amazing, delicious craft beer for literally pennies per glass – less than even the cheapest, worst-tasting options at the grocery store!