Grain Beetle Infestation

[ibrewforyou]

anyone have any good tips on cleaning up a grain bag storage room that has a good deal of beetles living in it?

do they like certain grains over others?

a good bug spray that is recommended?

thanks

[gitchegumee]

I beat an infestation several years ago and still have a clean grain room. Those beetles are something else! They actually made grain bags hot as they munched their way through my grain. They especially liked the crystal, Munich & Extra Special Malts. Remove all grain and either use it or dump it. Don't keep it around. Then meticulously clean your grain room. Fog it with standard bug foggers overnight. Spread "Roach Prufe" around the periphery and under your new, clean, uninfested pallets. Stack new grain bags and refog. Then we repeat when we restock the grain room four times a year, although we restock the old grain on top of the new. Due to being in the tropics, we also condition our grain room for temperature and humidity. Everything's good now!

[TNbrewer]

Beetles, or the tiny flour weevils?

[Moonlight]

Step one, don't allow grain dust anywhere, these little ones (if it is who I think) are called "confused flour beetles" because of their convoluted tracks and that they prefer flour (or softer roasted) kernels because their mouth parts are not strong enough to bite through whole firm kernels. If your mill is making dust, there will be a problem there. Be sure to clean out your mill as if there is malt dust in there, it will be heaven for them.

Next, remove all infested malt. Far away.

Next, keep all malt off the floor, bags should be in plastic garbage cans or drums. These guys aren't great at scaling up the sides of the tubs or drums if the walls are slick. Helps with mice issues as well.

Vacuum well, and get rid of what is collected in the vacuum, they like to eat what you have vacuumed up and they will crawl back out the hose.

I have never used fogs or sprays, but have used fairly non-toxic crawling bug powder and find it useful. I would bet DE would dissuade them as well as it would get into the joints of their exoskeletons.

Keep a vigil out for them on a regular basis. And they will be out of your life.

[BrewinLou]

We have had a problem with flour for years. A couple months ago while doing some maintenance on our mill, I noticed the small metal receiving hopper on the mill had not been assembled correctly. There was a large gap that was allowing a lot of kernels to fly out and a ton of flour. I fixed it and reduced our malt dust a great deal.

[blueskybrwr]

Temperature matters

In the north of the US it is usually the confused flour beetle (Tribolium confusum)and the south the red flour beetle (Tribolium castaneum). If you can keep grains on the cool side below 60 is ideal but below 80 will keep reproduction low and fewer generations. If you have infested grain that you can get in a freezer for a day or 2 it will knock out the larvae and adults long enough to get the grain into production without having an infestation.
They are tough critters to totally get rid of but controlling them to acceptable levels is not that hard if you are diligent in keeping an eye on your grain as you use it.
_______________________
Bill
Head Brewer
Blue Lab Brewing Co.
Lexington VA

[Geoff Logan]

I just had a small problem with this as well. Briess sent me a couple bags of Munich malt that were crawling with Sawtooth flour beetles that were more than happy to chew on some of my other malts when they escaped the bags. I called Briess and the Orkin man. Within a few days and some food grade beetle spray... problem solved.