Letter Re: How Do I Prepare Rice and Coffee for Long Term Storage?

Dear Sir,
Perhaps there is a food storage site you could direct me to which would answer my questions. I know how to store most things (wheat, salt, etc.) but wonder if there is a way to store brown rice (I’ve heard it could go rancid) and how do you store coffee (my LDS friends who have helped me with putting things in #10 cans don’t drink it, of course.) I’m assuming that storing coffee beans would be superior to storing ground coffee. When you get it at the store, sometimes it’s vacuum sealed. I can do that with my vacuum sealer. What I want to know it the best way to package it for long term storage, in a not so cool and pretty humid place (Louisiana).
My family and I have appreciated your books and are praying about relocating. Thanks, Sarah A.

JWR Replies: The best on-line reference on food storage that I can recommend is Alan T. Hagan’s Food Storage FAQ. The best hard copy books that I can recommend are Making the Best of Basics by James Talmage Stevens (available from www.mountainbrookfoods.com–one of our advertisers) and The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery.

Rice is best stored in 5 or 6 gallon food grade plastic buckets, using either the 02 absorbing packet method, or the dry ice method. Both of these methods are described in Alan T. Hagan’s Food Storage FAQ and in the “Rawles Gets You Ready” preparedness course. White rice stores better than brown rice, but its nutritive value is marginal. Brown rice has more natural oil, so it is indeed more prone to going rancid. So be sure to store it in the coolest part of your house. Here at the Rawles Ranch, we keep 200 pounds of rice in six gallon buckets on hand at all times, and systematically rotate it. (We use the oldest bucket first, and each time a bucket is consumed, we replace it with rice from a fresh sack.)

I also discuss coffee storage in the “Rawles Gets You Ready” preparedness course. I’ve been told that there is no perfect way to store coffee long term and still maintain connoisseur’s taste quality. (For the folks that pan roast their own beans.) Packing fresh beans is problematic. Roasted whole beans can be vacuum packed, and they do store slightly better that ground beans. But for the purposes of average coffee drinkers, the vacuum-packed “bricks ” of ground coffee beans store fairly well. Just be sure to protect them from vermin. Be sure to put your coffee bricks in food grade buckets or other sturdy containers. Post-TEOTWAWKI–along with other tropical produce–coffee will be scarce in North America and Europe, and hence should be a valuable barter item.