How long does Barley last in the pantry?
Turning the range into a date
Barley keeps 6 months in the pantry. Each kind gets its own dated rows here, 4 rows across the 2 the USDA lists under this name, because a date is only worth printing against the window it belongs to.
Barley, whole grain
- In the freezerUse by12 months after the day you stored it
- In the pantryUse by6 months after the day you stored it
Barley, flour, meal
- In the freezerUse by6 months after the day you stored it
- In the pantryUse by3 months after the day you stored it
The USDA rates 2 kinds of this separately
Barley, flour, meal keeps 3 months, which is shorter than the window this page answers with. The USDA files 2 separate entries under this name — whole grain and flour, meal — and they do not keep for the same time: Barley, flour, meal holds 3 months outside the freezer, Barley, whole grain holds 6 months.
The freezer helps less here than you would expect
The freezer buys less here than its reputation suggests: 2 times what the pantry gives, 6 months against 12 months, both still measured in months. For this item freezing is an extension rather than a different way of keeping it. On the same shelf it sits 11 of 23, between Bulgur at 12 months and Farro at 6 months. Whole grain, grain and flour are the same food in the source list.
Every storage figure the USDA publishes for this item
An unusual pairing: the USDA rates the pantry and the freezer for this item but skips the refrigerator entirely, one of 126 foods of the 466 that get no refrigerator time. The source also indexes it as whole grain, grain, flour and meal.
Barley, whole grain
- In the freezer12 months
- In the pantry6 months
Barley, flour, meal
- In the freezer6 months
- In the pantry3 months
Is it still safe to eat, or just past its best?
The answer at the top of this page reads 6 months in the pantry. The USDA rating this place at all is the USDA saying Barley, whole grain keeps there, so the figure rates how good it will be. Past it, whether it has gone bad is yours to judge by look and smell: this window rates quality, not the day it turns hazardous.
Held at 0 °F food stays safe for as long as it stays frozen, which is why a freezer figure counts as quality on this site whatever the food is. Every figure assumes the food was sound when you stored it, that your refrigerator holds 40 °F or below and your freezer 0 °F or below, and that the package was handled normally.
It is past the date. Now what?
Say the calculator above puts Barley, whole grain past its 6 months in the pantry window. Past that the calendar stops deciding and the food itself does. Insects or webbing in the package, a musty or rancid smell, or clumping that says damp got in mean it goes out whatever the date says.
The FoodKeeper entry this page is built from prints storage times and nothing else, so anything past them here is USDA and FSIS guidance rather than a figure from the source. The whole rule, including the cases the source does not cover, is set out under what to do when the date has passed.
Is that a long time?
4 items in the Grains, Beans & Pasta list keep exactly as long as Barley, whole grain, 6 months, so they all share place 11 of 23 rather than being put in an order the data does not support.
Items that behave the same way
Every one of the 6 nearest items keeps the same or less, 2 days to 6 months against the 6 months of Barley, whole grain, which makes it the durable end of the cluster.
Products the USDA rates in the same places
14 other products are rated in exactly these places — freezer and pantry — out of the 466 in the file, so this is an uncommon shape of record. The nearest of them by keeping time are Farro, Rye and Spelt. They are listed below with their own answers, closest first, which is why this list differs from the one on their pages. Of the ones shown, none keeps longer than this one does. The longest-keeping of them is Farro at 6 months. Counted more loosely, by which of the three places are rated at all, 16 products match this one.
- Farro6 months in the pantrywhole grain
- Rye6 months in the pantrywhole grain
- Spelt6 months in the pantrywhole grain
- Amaranth4 months in the pantrywhole grain
- Oats4 months in the pantrywhole grain
- Sorghum4 months in the pantrywhole grain
- Teff4 months in the pantrywhole grain
- Buckwheat2 months in the pantrywhole grain
The rest of the Grains, Beans & Pasta shelf
The USDA puts this product on the Grains, Beans & Pasta shelf together with 22 others, and 10 of them keep longer outside the freezer. The shelf runs from Quinoa at 3 years down to Fresh pasta at 2 days. Nearest this product by window are Farro, Rye and Spelt, which is the order the list below is printed in. Across the whole of Grains, Beans & Pasta the same product ranks 11 of 23. The middle of the shelf is Rye, at 6 months. The freezer is left out of the order on purpose: it flattens almost everything it touches.
- Farro6 months6 months in the pantry
- Rye6 months6 months in the pantry
- Spelt6 months6 months in the pantry
- Amaranth4 months4 months in the pantry
- Oats4 months4 months in the pantry
- Sorghum4 months4 months in the pantry
- Teff4 months4 months in the pantry
- Tortillas3 months3 months in the fridge once opened
If it has to keep longer than this
If it has to keep longer than 6 months, the Grains, Beans & Pasta aisle gives 10 products that hold at least twice as long outside the freezer. The smallest step up is Bulgur at 12 months against this one's 6 months; after it come Lentils, Peas and Mung bean. They are printed below in the order the step gets bigger, not alphabetically. In the other direction, 5 entries in the category keep half as long or less, Tortillas and Buckwheat among them. The largest step the category offers is Refried beans at 3 years.
- Bulgur12 months6 months in the pantry
- Lentils1 year1 year in the pantry once opened
- Peas1 year1 year in the pantry once opened
- Mung bean1 year1 year in the fridge
- Beans2 years1 year in the pantry once opened
- Pasta2 years1 year in the pantry once opened
- Dry egg noodles2 years1 month in the pantry once opened
- Rice2 years1 year in the pantry once opened
The record this page is built from
The USDA publishes 2 separate rows under this name — records 577 and 578 — and this page carries all of them rather than picking one, because their windows differ. Between them they fill 2 of the nine storage slots with a time. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for Barley, whole grain, which is the kind the plain name means here, chosen kind by kind rather than by the order the source happens to list them in. The same record answers to whole grain, grain, flour and meal in the source's own index.
Where these numbers come from
How long does this food keep in the refrigerator, in the freezer, in the pantry? Can you freeze it, and how much of its shelf life is left once the package is open? Every answer on this page is the USDA’s own published figure, one of the 9 it keeps per food, and never an estimate of ours.
Every range on this page is published by the USDA FoodKeeper and reproduced unchanged. The multipliers, the rankings, the percentages and the dates are ours, computed from those ranges. Where the source gives a span such as 3 to 5 weeks, comparisons use the upper figure, and the full span is always printed.
Rankings cover only the items the USDA gives a usable figure for, and identical ranges share a place rather than being ordered arbitrarily. Neighbors are chosen by nearest storage time within the same category, never alphabetically: two foods filed next to each other by name usually have nothing to do with each other. The freezer is excluded from ranking because it flattens almost everything.
Where the USDA lists several kinds under one name, they share one page here and every kind keeps its own windows: the source prints them as separate rows, and a page that merged them would be inventing a figure the source never published. Comparisons and the place in the category are computed for the kind the plain name means — the shell egg for eggs, the can for tuna — which is settled name by name rather than by the order the source lists its rows in, and the page names it. Where the plain name means no single kind, the page prints no single figure at all and lists the kinds instead.
Source: USDA FoodKeeper, retrieved 1 September 2026. This site computes every comparison on this page and takes responsibility for it. Found a figure that does not match the source? Tell us on the contact page, with the page and the row — the parsing is mechanical, so a mismatch is our bug and we want it. How the whole site is built, which figures are ours and where the source can be checked is on the method page.
USDA index terms: flour, grain, meal, whole grain
KeepsUntil is an independent reference built on public USDA data. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Food and Drug Administration. Whether a given window is a safety limit or a quality window is stated on the page that prints it.