Processing own oats for granola

[Helen24]

Hi,

I am looking into milling/flaking our own oats/barley and making into granola/museli to sell at farmers markets.

I want to start on a small scale to keep initial investment low and having a customer base before scaling up and was wondering whether anyone had any experience processing their own oats for human consumption and would be willing to share some insights or issues they have come across?

I know it might be a long shot but does anyone know of any mills/processors that might be willing to batch flake our own oats 100kgs or so at a time? Alternatively is there any machinery that would process on the 10s/100s/kg scale?

Would be brilliant to hear thoughts - thanks in advance!

Helen

 

[MattR]

Whereabouts are you based?

I've been on-and-off looking into this sort of thing for a while, done a bit of research but never taken the plunge. As you might well know the big issue with oats is rancidity - due to the high lipid content milled oats will very soon go rancid as the lipids oxidise, ie within a couple of weeks from what I've heard. To increase the shelf life all commercially produced porridge oats are heat treated in a specialist kiln/steaming unit, of which there don't seem to be any affordable small-scale versions available. (Would love to hear if you know of any!!) Oats also need to be de-hulled of course, for which you need specialist equipment, but that should be an easier thing to get around than the heat treating/lipid stabilising issue.

"Kent's Technology of Cereals" and "The Oat Crop" by R. W. Welch are both useful for a bit of background reading, although fairly pricey I seem to recall.

 

[Helen24]

Thanks for the reply Matt, I am Oxfordshire based.

I have done some reading though not as in depth as the two you have suggested, thankyou for these I will hunt them down and have a good read.

I haven't come across any small scale equipment in the UK, my conclusion is that the most likely place to be able to source them is from Alibaba (but not that keen....). Being able to outsource the processing until reaching the higher volumes and can then justify the large equipment would be the easiest option I think (if I can find anyone that would be willing to do it!)

 

[hollister]

I think there are some small scale processing units available from Japan

 

[MattR]

I think there are some small scale processing units available from Japan

That's interesting to know, haven't come across those. Do you know the brand name(s)?

 

[hollister]

was on this podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/tt/podca...ountain-organics/id1441886206?i=1000512045874

this is the guy featured - https://www.purpletools.net/grain-processing-equipment/