Hello,
First, thank you for all that you do. You have made a huge positive impact on a lot of people in my life. Second, I have been doing some pretty careful observation of our long term brown rice supplies. This started with me doing quite a bit of reading in books and on the internet about long term storage of brown rice. Most sources say that brown rice starts to go rancid around 6 months. I was disapointed with this number and so I decided to test it out for myself. In February of 2010, I put brown basmati rice into two food grade five gallon buckets lined with mylar bags, sublimated some dry ice in the buckets, and sealed the mylar bags. Then I put them under the house (which never gets above 70 degrees) and one year later I rotated one of the buckets into use. No problems. The rice seemed as fresh as day one. Move ahead another year and four months to June 2012 and I pulled the other bucket out because we were finally down to the end of the rice from the first bucket. So now I have three different rice samples to scrutinize. The rice from the first bucket which was under the house for a year and then in my garage (which gets hot in the summer) for another year and four months, the rice from the bucket that has been under the house for two years four months, and brand new rice that I just bought to rotate back under the house. I could not tell the difference between any of these samples. My wife, who is very sensitive to rancidity, said that she could smell a very slight difference, but that none of them smelled rancid. We have been eating the first bucket regularly and have not noticed any problems yet.
I would love to know the science behind my findings. Mostly I want to know how much the dry ice fumigation in mylar bags impacts the storability of brown rice. It seems like the carbon dioxide displacing the air in the mylar bag would cut down the oxidation process significantly. It sure would be nice if someone with the scientific resources could do some in depth research on this topic. I am going to start pulling buckets out after three years this next time to see if they will make it that long or longer. Hopefully I won’t be pulling them out before that due to the collision of some Schumer and a fan. Thanks again, – Jesse C.