flour storage buckets

[Alphaville]

i got some new sacks of flour and i need storage. i’ve searched the forums and see that plastic buckets with gamma lids are the preferred form.

i’m facing the current situation:

-round food buckets are easy to find online, and cheap.

-gamma lids are available, but not so cheap. eg. s $5 bucket goes up to $30 with gamma lid. or gamma lids are $12 ea. in lots of 5 ($60)

-square food buckets are a better use of space in my city apartment, but there are no gamma lids for them, correct?

i’m asking for help with the following:

1) what’s a good place to buy gamma lids online? what’s a reasonable price for them?

2) is there a gamma-alternative to square buckets? i thought of a square lid with a screwable circle on the middle but it doesn’t seem to exist

thanks in advance

[jacob]

The in-store (menards.com) gamma seal price is $6-7+tax per seal. Home improvement stores do deliver to home addresses for a fee. I've noticed that the gamma seal package deals on amazon et al with "free shipping" includes a markup that covers the shipping cost.

I've seen the square "food box" you're looking for (not gamma seal) but it was pretty expensive so I didn't attach very many neurons beyond "proving existence". I think it was some bulk food "restaurant solution".

[Alphaville]

thanks jacob! i had never looked at menards (eta: they don't have them in my state)

so, these are the square pails i was looking at:

https://www.uline.com/BL_8172/Square-Pa ... =food+pail

given my high real estate cost, the slight price increase (9/ea instead of $5 for round) might be worth it, but the lack of convenient lids is points against them.

[mooretrees]

Are you going to store the flour in the bucket as is, or line it with something? I’ve gone the round bucket with gamma kids ($8/ lid in my local ranching store) but feel uneasy about the food being in contact with the plastic. Curious what others think.

[Alphaville]

@mooretrees, funny you should mention that.

i just created a fake cart to look at shipping costs for gamma lids at menard's. i used zip code 90210 (easy to remember, and lol)

this is what i got back:

Due to recent changes in Proposition 65 this product is restricted from being sold to the state where your shipping address is located. Please remove this item from your cart.

The Gamma Seal® Lid
SKU: 6482908
QTY: 1

i know california is a bit stringent with their cancer stuff, but... unshippable?

i see delis and restaurants etc scooping food out of plastic pails used for shipping. i wasn't planning to use a liner in food grade buckets (have to be food grade, "fda approved") and i don't know what to think now...

eta: these say fda approved for direct food contact: https://www.uline.com/Product/Detail/S- ... hecked=yes

eta, 2:
for square pails it says in the small print:
USAGE:
Pails with lids are not airtight or leakproof.
While made of FDA compliant resins, it is recommended to clean before first use.

not airtight: *disqualified*

i’ll guess i’ll waste the corner space. back to round+gamma it is... except in california?

[sky]

Gamma lids are also not airtight.

[jacob]

Proposition 65 covers pretty much every consumer product whether it makes sense or not. As far as I understand, there's some certification a product needs to go through to certify than It's free of carcinogens. It's plausible that the company making/selling the item simply hasn't bothered to go through with the $$$-paperwork because the CA market is not big enough to be worthwhile compared to the $$$ of the cert.

[Alphaville]

Gamma lids are also not airtight.

gaaah i missed the fine print

thanks for the note. i was under the impression they were airtight from some prepper website i had read earlier. my fault for not verifying. it was these people: https://modernsurvivalblog.com/preps/gamma-seal-lid/ “airtight but not the same as mylar”. aghhh. not airtight really.

i guess square buckets are back in play, since they use every corner of my limited rectangular storage, and i’ll just fill an ez open flour can for the kitchen, as needed.

25lb is not a whole lot of flour, but this is just the season’s rye... more will be coming.

thanks guys.

[jacob]

Well, it's plastic compressing a rubber O-ring (it's probably the O-ring that CA slaps Prop65 on), so you're not going SCUBA diving with them. Tighter than Tupperware though and sufficiently tight to store dry goods for about a year. If you need longer than that, it's onto mylar bags and oxygen absorbers which are often put inside the bucket.

The main benefit as I see it is that the lids are supereasy to screw/unscrew, they keep out insects, and they're stackable. Can't quite say the same for snap lids. FWIW I was talking about them for years trying to decide whether they were worth it. One day, DW spotted them at Menards and bought one. We quickly converted our entire storage after that. Before that it was mostly bags with the top rolled up and clipped.

[luxagraf]

I have Uline buckets and gamma seal lids and I like them for some things, esp rice and flour, but I'm actually thinking of moving back to bags for things like beans because it makes for more compact storage. Or at least in my head it seems like it would, but I can't find decent quality bags that seem like they'll stand up to day-to-day use.

[Alphaville]

Tighter than Tupperware

thanks again! i’m “sold” (not that you’re selling, things just clicked in my head).

my storage shelves won’t allow stacking, or even tall 5gal buckets, but tighter than tupperware is good enough for me. indeed it will be for less than a year, because i don’t like to bake in summer. flatbreads only...

I have Uline buckets and gamma seal lids and I like them for some things, esp rice and flour, but I'm actually thinking of moving back to bags for things like beans because it makes for more compact storage. Or at least in my head it seems like it would, but I can't find decent quality bags that seem like they'll stand up to day-to-day use.

feels like someone should make food-grade “space bags”

dry bags maybe?? or just gunny sacks if you don’t need semi-airtight. you could perhaps hang them from the ceiling like giant provolones to keep critters away...

[luxagraf]

dry bags maybe?? or just gunny sacks if you don’t need semi-airtight. you could perhaps hang them from the ceiling like giant provolones to keep critters away...

Huh, dry bags is a good idea. Just line them with a food grade bag and you're good. Maybe. I have a few, I'll give it at shot and see what happens. Thanks.

[Alphaville]

update: after a long bout of analysis paralysis, calculations, re-budgetings, doubts and hopes and wild guesses, i decided to satisfice instead of optimize: i took my 25lb rye flour, divided it into gallon freezer bags (used up 6 of them) and placed them in the freezer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

added bonus: freezer might kill any bugs lurking. plus, turns out (just checked after the fact cuz i’m impulsive that way) freezer is recommended for rye anyway: https://www.cooksillustrated.com/how_to ... zing-flour

i’ll do the same with the whole wheat, which is always problematic. (i think buckets might be better for wheat berries after all)

took a couple of days of mess, but pantry is now fully reorganized, like with like; and everything is easy to spot and accessible, and no food is left in outdoor storage.

bycicle stuff is next...

[plow_2]

I use mylar bags before I put stuff in buckets and then seal them usually with o2 absorber inside.
Gamma lids do make things easy to get in and out but if you aren't getting in them daily then I don't think they are worth the extra cost.

[Alphaville]

ah, mylar, etc.... i might look into mylar bags. thanks!

i don’t have a mega-storage, my pantry is good for 6 months only, with fifo inventory system. for anything longer than that it makes no sense to keep at this place (i have 2 dwellings, this one is temporary/work related). and yeah we just bake & make fresh pasta etc on weekends. weekdays it’s mostly work.

i have a wide mix of pantry staples, so if i had giant volumes of each one, it would take forever to consume and/or they’d go bad (except sealed in mylar etc).

eg: 25lb flour is roughly 50 cups. if i use 2 cups a week, that’s half a year’s worth—but that is rye alone. i also have all-purpose, bread flour, dark whole wheat, white whole wheat. plus oats, rice, polenta, dry pasta...

eta: i think the only grain worth storing in mass quantities is white rice, given its long life (10yrs?). for other grains, i’d think in seed form (e.g. wheat, barley, corn) is better than flour as one could in theory replant.