Malt Storage Under Co2?

[alexbrand]

From time to time I hear about small bugs in the malt. Next friday I'll get plenty of pilsner malt. It might last for the next two years...

Could it be useful to put it all in an airtight barrel and flood it with carbon dioxide to prevent bugs from eating and pissing in my malt?

Alex

 

[John Kennedy]

Alex,

I have been storing my malt like this for 5 years, yes some of the malt is that old and appears to be ok.

Cheers! John K

 

[Simon W]

Hmmm, might look into doing this.

Early this year I bought some Weyerman CaraAmber from Roy at TWOC, stored it in my grain bucket with bags of other grain.
Opened the barrel up a few weeks later and there were little white grubs everywhere. The CaraAmber was chewed to buggery, they had chewed their way out of the plastic bag and into every other bag of grain. Strange tho, but they left all the other grain alone after trying a sample of each and leaving holes in the bags(inc. CaraAroma). The only other thing they ate was the bag of Coopers DME.

Where did they come from? no idea, so I'm not gonna pin it on either Roy or Wey, coz it coulda happened anywhere in the supply chain.
Thinking they could possibly be an exotic pest from Germany, I squished every one of the buggers.

 

[Cortez The Killer]

It raises the whole "is beer vegetarian?" conundrum doesn't it

Cheers

 

[sathid]

sounds like maybe weevils? They are already in most grain products (even cereal) apparently. They are microscopic eggs initially but the warm weather can cause them to hatch. And they are buggers to get rid of.

If you can keep the grain cold (like, in a fridge) it won't happen.

Watch out for the grain being moist however.

 

[Simon W]

Nah they weren't weevils, have had them too(deliberately!*) and yeah they're hard to get rid of, easiest way I found is to soak all infected grain for a day or two to drown them, never seen one since.

*deliberately? Well, yeah. My mum used to work for a grain merchant(they sell to JW and a few other maltsters) and grabbed me small bag of weevil infected grain, coz I'd never seen 'em before.
I kept 'em well away from my store!
I could probably go up there(just 'round the corner from TWOC) to check their pest chart for what the little white grubs were.

Edit: Just found this link
The Weevil there is definitely the same as the weevils I had, but I never saw a grub because they eat their way out of the grain core as an adult. "Adults cannot fly and feign death if disturbed." Haha, yep thats them.

The grub things I had coulda been anything, but the Indian Meal Moth grub looks closest.
Larvae spin webs on the surface of the grain.... That fits. The grain would stick to the bag.

 

[sathid]

From that link:

Stored grain insects may also be controlled by:

* Cooling stored grain through aeration
* Treating grain with an insecticide powder such as Dryacide or liquid residual chemicals
* Treating infested grain with dichlorvos
* Fumigating grain with phosphine
* Controlled atmosphere such as carbon dioxide in a gas-tight silo
* Treating storage areas and equipment with residual chemicals

 

[haysie]

Nah they weren't weevils, have had them too(deliberately!*) and yeah they're hard to get rid of, easiest way I found is to soak all infected grain for a day or two to drown them, never seen one since.

*deliberately? Well, yeah. My mum used to work for a grain merchant(they sell to JW and a few other maltsters) and grabbed me small bag of weevil infected grain, coz I'd never seen 'em before.
I kept 'em well away from my store!
I could probably go up there(just 'round the corner from TWOC) to check their pest chart for what the little white grubs were.

Edit: Just found this link
The Weevil there is definitely the same as the weevils I had, but I never saw a grub because they eat their way out of the grain core as an adult. "Adults cannot fly and feign death if disturbed." Haha, yep thats them.

The grub things I had coulda been anything, but the Indian Meal Moth grub looks closest.
Larvae spin webs on the surface of the grain.... That fits. The grain would stick to the bag.

WTF

 

[Simon W]

:huh: and....

 

[alexbrand]

I also stored my grain now few days after my first post under CO2. I did not open the buckets yet. But through the transparent lid I could not see anything bad.

Alex

 

[haysie]

:huh: and....

i find it disturbing someone would take home/aquire a bag of weevil infected grain from the distributor, coz you had never seen them before!
Then post your results??/ Which were?? Whatever whitegrubs they were,? you never found out?
Not quite but somewhat akin too a New South Welshman or a Queenslander crossing borders south during an equine flu hazard with a float load of horses too prove it aint "catcchy" Back on topic, anywhere in the transportation/storage/retail chain things (like above) happen. C02? are the maltsters, storers, lhbs`s using it?

 

[Simon W]

All the answers are in the original post, but maybe it wasn't clear.
The weevils were contained and kept separate from my brewing grain stock, the white grubs(probably Indian Meal Moth) have no relation to the weevils, were a separate infestation and not deliberate.
I Learnt a lot from both, that they are hard to get rid of but I found soaking all infected grain and drowning them worked perfectly(burning the grain would probably work too), both will eat thru plastic bags to get another meal(never heard of that before), Weevils aren't fussy what the eat but the grub's were, a 20L plastic snap-lid pail will keep them in(therefore, will also keep them out)
What any of it has in relation to EI, I have no idea, there are no similarities.

If you knew all that already then I'm sorry I bored you, change the channel.

The weevil thing actually helped me with the later grub infestation; I looked for holes in all the other bags of grain and there were some, something I probably wouldn't have expected and looked for otherwise, then thinking everything was okay I would have ended up with re-infestation.

 

[sathid]

in addition, weevils WILL apparently eat through plastic packaging. So don't put specialty grains in snap lock bags etc thinking it will keep them out.