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Mylar bags per bucket, and oxygen absorbers
See how many mylar bags fit in a bucket, how much food and how many calories that is, and what size oxygen absorber to put in each bag.
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How the absorber size is chosen
A bag full of food still holds air. This estimate treats about a third of the bag volume as air, and air is about 21 percent oxygen. The cubic centimetres of oxygen are rounded up to the next 50 cc, which is how absorber packets are sold.
A one-gallon bag comes out at 300 cc. A quart bag is smaller. A whole 5-gallon bag needs far more. The bucket count uses 85 percent of the bucket volume divided by the bag volume, because soft bags do not tile perfectly. Four one-gallon bags in an 18.9 litre bucket is the usual result.
Put the absorber in as you seal the bag. An absorber that sits in open air before the seal spends itself on the room.
How to pack a bucket
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Step 1
Choose the food and the bag
The weight uses that food’s bulk density, assuming the bag is full.
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Step 2
Check the bucket litres
A standard 5-gallon bucket is about 18.9 litres. Change it if yours is marked differently.
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Step 3
Match the absorber
Use at least the cc number shown, per bag. Add the per-bucket total if you are buying a tub of packets.
Pack-out questions
Can I skip the absorber?
You can seal a bag without one. Do not then use the twenty-year mylar dates. Those assume the oxygen is gone.
Why not fill the bucket with loose rice?
You can. The calorie tool covers a bucket with no bags. Bags are for foods you want to open one at a time.
Does the food weight include the absorber?
No. A packet weighs very little next to several kilograms of rice.
Related
Seal it, then write the code and the date on the outside.