I recently gathered a bunch of acorns, and plan to get a bunch more from the same spot. I’ve been reading different things about processing them, and one thing that caught my eye that I hadn’t remembered from previous readings was that, according to one of the authors (can’t remember who) freshly ground acorn flour lasts about a week outside of refrigeration. Presumably it’s a bit longer than that if I have it in an airtight container, but of course I want them to last all winter or longer. I know that with wheat and other grains, they can last basically indefinitely if they’re kept whole and stored dry. Are acorns similar to this? Should I keep them whole and just grind them in small batches?
Hey Dan,
Last year, after some trial and error, I finally figured out something that worked well and ended up with a huge batch of acorn meal that lasted me a long, long time. If I can find the online source again that really helped me out, I’ll post it.
So let’s see, I think I shelled 'em and ground’em up first, to the texture of more of a meal than a flour, like grits, then soaked em in a gallon jar in the fridge (or outside if cold enough), changing the water once or twice a day for a week or so, tasting them, til the bitterness left. Then I spread em on a cookie sheet in the oven at the lowest setting til they got good and dry, and kind of a dark, roasty brown. Then back in the jar. The meal stored well, and I mixed those acorns into all kinds of soups, stews, puddings, etc. They had a really lovely, mild nutty flavor.
I used acorns from a black/red oak type tree–with the deeply cut, pointy lobed leaves. If you can find the white oak type, with more rounded lobes on the leaves, you may not have to do all that soaking. I couldn’t find enough of those to process last year.
I still hear my son say thanks to those oak trees sometimes. 
Yes, Dan, you most definitly CAN store unprocessed acorns for many months, if not a year or more. Around here, ai’ve eaten acorns from the forest floor months after prime harvest time, even into summer (though few actually remain uneaten till then). Prime acorn season starts in mid fall, so they’ve been sitting untouched, unprotected, in all the elements (though we rarely get more than one or two mild frosts at most; californiaahh… sigh…) for nine or ten months and they’re still good. Of course, you’ll probably be wanting to keep them from rotting and being eaten by other animal species, so a good drying and storage in a dry area should solve all of your problems.
A note: native wimin knew: smaller acorns dry faster. Keep that in mind and maybe eat the big ones first. Or not at all. After all, we know what size discrimination is doing to the average size of wild fish populations, so why not do the opposite with acorns and make them bigger over time? (thats a little off topic, but ai hope you’ll indulge me a little creative rambling :P)