I quite enjoy cereals that have a range of different ingredients - like oat clusters with freeze dried strawberry or museli with almonds and raisins. Over time though, the oats rise to the top and the smaller bits get trapped at the bottom so when you’re near the end of the packet it’s 70% dust.
Is there an easy way to prevent this? It’s hard to mix up the contents without breaking up everything into smaller bits. And shaking up the packet just makes the separation worse.
Least effort way: Store sideways/horizontally/perpendicular to pouring. Not vertical. Will settle to side instead of bottom and come out more evenly.
That’s actually a very simple solution that I imagine would be pretty effective!
It leads me to wonder - is the granular separation more pronounced in a horizonal section (where you’d have more surface area for particles to fall between) or a vertical section (where gravity would have a greater effect)?
Particles are going to settle at roughly the same rate either orientation.
- Vertical storage will stack higher and have a greater distance to opening on top, causing the not mixed well enough issue.
- Horizontal storage more evenly distributes the mix for a more similar pour upon reorientation.
- Flat on it’s face would distributor even closer to even mix, but that way lies madness and is not optimal for pantry storage. [Maybe flat on top of fridge might work?]
So the spectrum will be the same at any orientation except the effect will be more or less pronounced. With flat storage leading to the least granular separation while also being inconvenient to practically store.
Don’t shake, roll the contents.
Rolling the contents will get the small pieces to move upward while not breaking the contents itself. Having a container which has extra room is important.
Assuming it comes mixed well at the start - you could try scooping it out with a cup instead of pouring it out, to minimize the agitation that leads to separation.
That’s just the property of gravity. And the different weights of your cereals. You could individually package the serial into small containers at the start so you could maintain uniform distribution. You could shake the bag before you pour some out. But you run the risk of breaking the cereal.
It’s called brazil nut effect.
Scientific name of the effect: Granular convection
Having the ingredients in individual containers is a good idea! However I usually buy a pre-made muesli mix and surprisingly it seems to work out very cheap compared to buying the individual ingredients (unless perhaps I was to buy them in bulk somewhere). I’m not sure I can beat £2 for 1kg of muesli from Aldi. It’s convenient too, but then I run into the separation issues of course.
Either you’re missing a place to buy the ingredients in bulk. Or they’re cheating you on something.
If anyone knows where to buy muesli ingredients in bulk in the UK I’d be interested to hear!
eBay
Yeah, it’s rather inescapable. This phenomenon is sometimes known as the 'Brazil nut effect`
Just pour milk into the box and eat it all?
My friend adds water instead of milk… I think he’s a cereal killer
I read this wrong that you wanted them to separate without turning to dust and here I was designing you some low impact centrifuge. Nevermind.
Thanos is right behind him, any time the cereal is not to his liking, snap snap.
You could use one of those serial containers with a hole on the bottom. It’s either got a button or a lever to give you a serving. Then you’re always taking the cereal from the bottom of the pile.
That just reverses the problem instead of solving it. You’ll end up with 70% oats when you reach the upper level of contents.
Turn upside down the box each time you use it and store it like this. If you want to be super sure, each time take out cereals from opposite sides of the bulk after shaking the box
Separate the cereal and store separately, then combine the perfect ratio in your bowl.
Disturb the bag (shaking, turning, and rustling) as little as possible. Reach in with your hand or a spoon to get cereal instead of pouring it out.
Shaking it upside down should reverse the density sort somewhat. Make sure you clip the bag closed securely first though!
Yes I guess that would help, as long as I don’t over shake it and cause the same problem in the opposite direction
This would be a funny black mirror episode, a robot personal assistant struggles to pour the perfect bowl of cereal.
Anyone here buy the components separately and then mix them in proportion when you want cereal?
