User Panel
[#1]
Thanks for sharing.
I've often wondered about many of the same products you listed. I have all of them in my stash plus a deep rotation I'd the wet pack items. For the items that went bad, we're the cans obviously ruptured and/or leaking? |
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[#2]
Great share!
Were they all cans, or was there any mylar involved? |
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[#3]
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[#4]
The problem with tomatoes being canned is the acid can eat away at the metal and cause problems that way.
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[#5]
Quoted: I’d be surprised if there was Mylar over two decades ago. View Quote We packed the better part of a million or so lbs. of various foods in 1998 and 1999 when we ran a mid sized commercial cannery, I would guess 40% or so of it was packed in Superpails (6 gallon bucket, mylar lined, o2 absorbers). |
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[#6]
I wouldn't have doubted the Mt. House.
Everything you wrote lines up with what I tell people regarding our experience using and rotating LTS over the last 36 years. Course some of them tell me their pinto beans are fine, but I'm guessing in a MUCH smaller rotation window. The lentils should be good to go. We haven't rotated any buckets of lentils from that time period that had issues. Dairy I would expect to be close to the toss point. On the fruits- lots of places were skimping and not buying good truly dehydrated (versus "dried") product back in that time period. The reason was everyone was scrambling to get LTS out on the market, as all of the big manufacturers were six months or more behind- yes six month wait to get staples like hard red winter wheat, new "preppers" don't know how good they have it!. A true dehydrated apple slice doesn't bend at all, it will snap like a potato chip. If it bends it was either shittake quality to begin with, or has absorbed a helluva lot of moisture. People forget how hydroscopic some of these products are. We used to get dehydrated milk in 2,000 lb. "totes"- basically a big arse bag inside another heavy duty bag on a pallet. My guys hated it when milk arrived cause that was ALL we did was pack milk till the tote was empty- it had to be packed quickly. No matter what you did, everyone was covered in milk powder by the end of it. |
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[#8]
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[#9]
Were these cans of dried beans, or were they cooked beans that had been canned?
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[#10]
Wow even if only a 1/4 of that was good I'd still say it was a win. Id be fine eating freeze dried food that old (minus what was spoiled).
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[#11]
OP, you got a great deal even if all you do is feed it to chickens and turn it into eggs.
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[#12]
I'd like to downsize my life as well, but the last thing I would part with is my prep food. wonder why they decided to do that. Good for you though. Damn, that's a lot of food.
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[#14]
A lot of that depends on how it was stored as well. If they stored in their garage for 20 years that will cause things to go bad faster. All of ours is stored in the house, in a temperature / humidity controlled environment.
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[#15]
Quoted: Thanks for sharing. I've often wondered about many of the same products you listed. I have all of them in my stash plus a deep rotation I'd the wet pack items. For the items that went bad, we're the cans obviously ruptured and/or leaking? View Quote No. None of the cans were ruptured or leaking. They were just bulging. When I opened them, the pressurized air shot out. |
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[#16]
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[#17]
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[#18]
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[#19]
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[#20]
Quoted: I wouldn't have doubted the Mt. House. Everything you wrote lines up with what I tell people regarding our experience using and rotating LTS over the last 36 years. Course some of them tell me their pinto beans are fine, but I'm guessing in a MUCH smaller rotation window. The lentils should be good to go. We haven't rotated any buckets of lentils from that time period that had issues. Dairy I would expect to be close to the toss point. On the fruits- lots of places were skimping and not buying good truly dehydrated (versus "dried") product back in that time period. The reason was everyone was scrambling to get LTS out on the market, as all of the big manufacturers were six months or more behind- yes six month wait to get staples like hard red winter wheat, new "preppers" don't know how good they have it!. A true dehydrated apple slice doesn't bend at all, it will snap like a potato chip. If it bends it was either shittake quality to begin with, or has absorbed a helluva lot of moisture. People forget how hydroscopic some of these products are. We used to get dehydrated milk in 2,000 lb. "totes"- basically a big arse bag inside another heavy duty bag on a pallet. My guys hated it when milk arrived cause that was ALL we did was pack milk till the tote was empty- it had to be packed quickly. No matter what you did, everyone was covered in milk powder by the end of it. View Quote All of the cans of fruit, meat, and stuff like that was labeled as freeze dried and nitrogen packed. |
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[#21]
Quoted: I'd like to downsize my life as well, but the last thing I would part with is my prep food. wonder why they decided to do that. Good for you though. Damn, that's a lot of food. View Quote I have a feeling it wasn't entirely their choice. They sons were there liquidating their stuff. I talked to the old man briefly, but didn't want to pry into his personal business. He didn't seem really happy to be selling his stuff. I have a feeling their kids were putting them into a home. |
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[#22]
Quoted: Thank you. That's good to know. I'm assuming metal cans are lines with something typically to keep the food from ruining them from the inside out? View Quote A QUALITY #10 can should be "double enamaled" and will appear gold colored on the inside and outside. In the 90's these cans were twice as expensive as the plain silver colored cans when we used to buy truckloads of them. |
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[#23]
I sure hope that one day I will be able to sell of my stored food, because that would mean nothing ever went majorly wrong.
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[#24]
Great thread!
I've been storing and rotating food since 2005. I've thrown away very little during that time but somehow a few 2008 era canned kidney beans got to the back of a stack. When I opened one of them recently, it had definitely started to get funky. |
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[#25]
Quoted: I recently bought a stash of food from an elderly couple that were downsizing. The stash was all basically Y2K stuff they stockpiled and had dates of 1999 on them. There were some things that were also dated 1980, but it wasnt much and the majority of it was stuff like hard wheat. I went through all of it and checked for bulges or dents or any abnormalities and disposed of those. I also opened a can in almost every case if they were the same product just to check to see if it was still good. I figured if one can in the case was good, then the others probably were as well. I am not sure if they stored the stuff in a very good environment or not but it was only $250 for all of it and it came with a 60lbs bucket of honey, so I figured I would at least make it worth my money there. Only time will tell I guess. Half was Mountain House brand and the other half was Safe Trek Foods. A couple things I noticed right off the bat. Mountain house is the premium product. I have a few other version of freeze dried foods, but nothing compares to the quality of the food, the quality of the boxes, and the quality of the cans to Mountain House. All the cans were filled to the brim rather than the cans I buy now that are basically half filled. Im sure this is a shrinkflation thing. Cans of powdered stuff were actually heavy in the hand. Barely any of the Mountain House stuff was bad. I think I only threw out half a dozen cans of Mountain House where I threw out a couple dozen or so cases at least of the Safe Trek Foods. And both brands were dated within a few months of each other. Both brands had labels stating they were packed in nitrogen. The #1 thrown out product were pinto beans followed by red beans and some other beans of the larger size. The tiny beans that were the size of lentils were still ok. The bigger beans had bulged cans and when opened stunk like hell. Smaller beans seemed fine. All the big beans got tossed. All the tomato powder cans were bad and bulged the most. Which kind of threw me off as I thought they would be really acidic and would keep bad things from going. Apparently thats not the case. Powdered milk was 50/50. Along with eggs and some other products that were similar. Fruits with high moisture content in their original form were bad. Stuff like pineapple, apples, and peaches. They werent bad as in spoiled necessarily, but they definitely had lost their appeal appearance wise and texture wise. They were all clumped together in the bottom of the cans like one solid object and brown colored. They smelled fine and the cans were fine, but I dumped them anyways due to the appearance and new solid state. Most of the meats were good and interestingly enough, there were even things like ribeye steaks in #10 cans. One of the biggest things Im trying to figure out is why the beans were bad. Its one of the highest ranked stored items but those were the ones that had gone bad first. I wonder if its because they are more fragile to the temperatures and they werent stored correctly or what the deal was. Both brands had bad cans of beans, so I dont think it was necessarily a brand issue. I wish I would of taken a lot more pics, but to be honest, it was a lot of food to go through and I just got lost in filtering the good with the bad. Im not counting on it as my main supply, but its a great supplement to my current storage or even bartering items. https://i.imgur.com/myDvV1rh.jpg View Quote The tomato powder should not have surprised you at all, really. Acidic foods in cans usually go first, because they compromise the cans. |
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[#26]
They must be wet canned beans?
We opened a mylar bag of black beans last night that I packaged ~2011, looked just as good as the day I packed them, no special treatment other than oxy absorbers. ETA: I see it was dried beans. That seems off, wonder why they went bad? Maybe there was some moisture? |
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[#27]
Quoted: I sure hope that one day I will be able to sell of my stored food, because that would mean nothing ever went majorly wrong. View Quote Most of my stored food is stuff we regularly eat. So it gets constantly rotated. I only have a couple weeks worth of MRE/Freeze dried. That I don't rotate or toss. I just slowly accumulate. In other words, I'll probably never reach a point where I'm selling. |
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[#29]
holy cow! dried beans smelling off?
heck, they smell off in 8 hours wet! after cooking. dry, pressurized can of beans ? maybe they were prepped poorly? I would like to learn more. |
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[#31]
Should send of the vintage mountain house and other interesting stuff to Steve1989MREinfo for a review, would be interesting to see!
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[#33]
Quoted: They were all dried beans. View Quote Dried beans can have at least a trace of residual moisture. They may have simply been canned too soon. Those were panicky times, and storage food companies were literally shipping everything they could get their hands on, as fast as they could get it. The original buyers should have been rotating that food through their normal diets instead of keeping it like a trophy or perhaps more accurately, an insurance policy. |
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[#34]
Quoted: Dried beans can have at least a trace of residual moisture. They may have simply been canned too soon. Those were panicky times, and storage food companies were literally shipping everything they could get their hands on, as fast as they could get it. The original buyers should have been rotating that food through their normal diets instead of keeping it like a trophy or perhaps more accurately, an insurance policy. View Quote OP said they were older folks now. LOTS of people were buying MUCH MORE food than just the main one or two people in the household would use back then. Often times people prepare for extended family/friends who won't, supposedly can't "afford to", or are just too fricking lazy to do it themselves. I've been guilt of this at times and especially back then. I was preparing for 12 people although I only have 2 in my family. Then when you have to rotate the quantity of food for 12 people with just 2 or 3, it certainly complicates things. Honestly I don't bother with that any more, and should have been a heartless ba$tard and not done that back then- but I had nephews and nieces that I kinda liked LOL and their dragarse parents weren't going to prepare but damn sure would have shown up to my place. So you get into the conundrum of do you stock a year supply for 3 people that BECOMES a 4 month supply when a ton of family shows up, or do you prepare for them because you know they won't? That and honestly it was because I could. We had a commercial cannery back then and I would often take the product that was canned but someone forgot to put a label on and instead of possibly mislabeling it, I would say "put it in my stack." In a perfect world employees are smart and do their job correctly, but that isn't really the case in the real world. Instead of accidentally shipping someone lentils who might have bought something else, I had them put it in my stack and I put that away for my family. When we rotate those it's always like a guessing game- shake the can, judge the weight and guess what it is before opening it, LOL. Better than sending an unknown to a customer IMO. So I ended up with a fair amount of "extra" LTS that way also. And yes they definitely should have been rotating more, but more than likely the original stockpile was 2-3 times that. It was nothing back then to have folks drive to our place in Florida from all over the country, pay cash and literally load up a rental Uhaul truck. One family drove from Colorado and bought a total of about 3 pallets, loaded it up paid cash and left. Things were a lot different in the preparedness movement back then. |
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[#35]
Y2K was almost a practice run. There were issues, but not as widespread as many predicted.
Today we're all much more dependent on technology. We'd be totally screwed if what was predicted for Y2K would happen today. |
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