Top Tips for Storing Oats

Can you store your oats long term?

Before I answer this question and give you my top tips for storing oats. I would love to share with you exactly the process of what happens once a purchase order goes to GF Harvest LLC in the USA, for a new load of oats to be dispatched. The oat seed comes out of storage and is steamed and rolled for each placed order. This way, when we receive the order here in Australia we have the maximum ‘Best Before date’ we can possibly have on the product. Which is generally around 18months.

A ‘Best Before Date’ is not a safety date. It is the manufacturer’s estimate of how long the rolled oats will remain at peak quality. Here at GF Oats Australia, we import the product in 22.67kg bags and down pack them into Australian compliant packaging in all varying sizes. The Oats are stored in a cool, dry environment to retain the ‘best before date’. During the summer months, we store the oats in cold rooms locally.

Top Tips for Storing Oats at Home

After receiving your GF Oats you will need to store the oats in a cool, dry and airtight sealed container. Either in your pantry or by all means in your fridge or freezer. The 380g muesli bags and the 500g retail oat packs, all have a reseal option built into the bags. This is so that you don’t have to transfer them to another form of packaging.

The bulk bags are a little different. Once you cut the tops off the 1kg or 2kg bulk bags, transfer the oats into a resealable container. This can be glass or plastic to store in your pantry. You can transfer half the oats if you wish. Then reseal the bag as best you can and retain in the fridge or freezer.

If you do store your oats in the fridge or the freezer, you have just suspended them in time. Effectively you can more than extend the best before date longer than suggested on the packaging.

So, what if your oats are outside the ‘best before date’

Best before dates can be found on any of the packagings along with batch numbers. If you do happen to have your oats after that time, the oats may certainly continue to be fit for human consumption as they are steamed and rolled oats which are very stable. They may change in colour, texture or flavour. If these 3 elements look fine to you and you believe the oats have been stored correctly then give it a try. Let’s face it, they are too expensive to throw out. Sometimes I have used dry products that are a little outside the best before date, in cooking, as opposed to consuming raw without any problems at all.

Anyway, I do trust that this gives you an idea on how to store your oats to get the maximum ‘best before’ out of them. I do assume you would have munched them up long before the due date.

Please jump over to our Youtube channel and Kylie has explained this process to you and suggested some containers for appropriate storage.