Powdered Milk For Long Term Storage
Cost Savings of Powdered Milk
Powdered milk could be an important part of the prepper pantry. Long term storage of milk… I’ll tell you what we’ve done to solve this problem, and what we specifically buy.
UPDATE (2021)
This article is one of my first ever on this blog! Way, way back in January, 2010. I happened across it today, more than 11 years later.
Interesting… So what’s the price of milk these days? Well it depends where you live. The cost reference above was associated with living (at the time) in a highly populated city region (right before we moved out!), so, more expensive I suppose.
A quick internet search today, 2021, reveals the average price of milk these days seems to vary around $3 dollars a gallon. A bit more or less…
Anyway, back to the short article…
Powdered Milk in Bulk
We decided to look into powdered milk. What we discovered may surprise you. We found several websites where you can purchase powdered milk in #10 cans.
(Update: What we bought was from Augason Farms. We really like the taste compared to other powdered milks.)
Augason Farms Morning Moo’s Low Fat Milk Alternative – Makes 6 Gallons
(view on their storefront at amzn)
If you’re looking for pure powdered milk for long term storage, again, Augason Farms has that too:
Country Fresh 100% Real Instant Nonfat Dry Milk
We decided to buy one can of their ‘Milk Alternative’ to see if it would suit our palettes. After our first pitcher, we were hooked, and here’s why.
This is not the powdered milk of our youth. It tastes good!
But here’s some advice. After you mix your first batch, don’t take your first taste until after you’ve refrigerated it for a few hours. I’ll admit, it doesn’t taste as good when warm, compared to when it’s cold. Also, when you mix it, make sure you use a whisk, not a spoon. Big difference.
The powdered milk has a 20 – 25 year shelf life unopened. That’s some great long term storage! It has a one to two year shelf life if opened. The two of us go through a can about every 6 weeks.
There is no more waste. You can mix as much or as little as you need. For the two of us, I mix 6 cups at a time. I have two pitchers that I rotate, so when one is getting low, I mix another batch so there is always some that is refrigerator cold. No more throwing away a quarter of a gallon because it went bad before you could drink it all.
The nutritional value is comparable to store bought milk. In fact, the powdered milk has a little less fat.
Additional update, again, 11 years later…
We have purchased this particular powdered milk off-and-on throughout all these years. It has always been great. We keep a good number of these #10 cans in our long term preparedness food storage. It’s perfect for that.
- 93 1-cup Servings
- 5.8 Gallons
- 6,510 Calories
- Makes approximately 5.8 gallons
- Certified Gluten-Free
- Up to a 25 Year Shelf Life!
It was kind of neat finding this old post. Someone on the blog had remarked about powdered milk shelf life, which reminded me of this.
Oh, powdered milk shelf life will depend on how it’s packaged. Typical grocery-store powdered milk is not packaged in vacuum-sealed #10 cans like I referenced above. Instead they’re in these soft packs, or a cardboard-type container. So shelf life is going to be much, much shorter. A year or two?
