Question about grain mill consistency

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jceg316

jceg316

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I'm thinking about getting a grain mill as I buy base malts in the 25kg sacks and would like them to stay fresher for longer. Similarly with speciality malts, it can be months before I use some from a half open bag, so keeping the grains whole will help with freshness here.

The grind of the malt has an effect on efficiency as well though, and some people have told me if I mill my own grain I can get better efficiency than using pre milled grain. I assume that maltsters like Weyermans, Crisp, Muntons etc mill their grains perfectly, after all they are professionals at this. Or is this not the case? Is it possible I could mill my own grains to achieve better efficiency than these companies can?

TIA.
 
jceg316 said:
I'm thinking about getting a grain mill as I buy base malts in the 25kg sacks and would like them to stay fresher for longer. Similarly with speciality malts, it can be months before I use some from a half open bag, so keeping the grains whole will help with freshness here.

The grind of the malt has an effect on efficiency as well though, and some people have told me if I mill my own grain I can get better efficiency than using pre milled grain. I assume that maltsters like Weyermans, Crisp, Muntons etc mill their grains perfectly, after all they are professionals at this. Or is this not the case? Is it possible I could mill my own grains to achieve better efficiency than these companies can?

TIA.
Click to expand...

I think the milling is normally done by the store you buy from ??

For BIAB a finer mill is preferable as it will help efficiency, for traditional mash tun you don't want a fine mill as it can cause the mash/ sparge to stick.
 
As cov says I think it's the store where you buy the grain that mills it for you. I buy my grain usually from geterbrewed. The offer crushed or uncrushed on all their grains. I'm doubting they buy two lots of the same grain, crushed and uncrushed to sell to punters like me.

I definatley think you get better efficiency from a finer crush with biab. I bought some weyermans pale malt from geterbrewed (hadn't tried this maltster for pale before) and brewed with it on sat. The grain definaly seemed a finer crush than usual as I was struggling to get my mash bag to drain and I way over shot my target brew length when it came to diluting my concentrated wort down. I was aiming for 23L and the calcs came out at 24.8L. I chose to make a stonger brew and have 23L rather than my target OG at 24.8L
 
jceg316 said:
I'm thinking about getting a grain mill as I buy base malts in the 25kg sacks and would like them to stay fresher for longer. Similarly with speciality malts, it can be months before I use some from a half open bag, so keeping the grains whole will help with freshness here.

The grind of the malt has an effect on efficiency as well though, and some people have told me if I mill my own grain I can get better efficiency than using pre milled grain. I assume that maltsters like Weyermans, Crisp, Muntons etc mill their grains perfectly, after all they are professionals at this. Or is this not the case? Is it possible I could mill my own grains to achieve better efficiency than these companies can?

TIA.
Click to expand...

My efficiency jumped 10% after buying my mill.
It's not that you'd get a better crush, it's that when you mill on the morning of a brew day you loose a lot less extract potential. After grain has been crushed it looses potential day after day, whole grains don't suffer in the same way.

Have a read of 'Malt' to find just about all the info you'll need to know.
In that book they give guidelines on how to crush at home, and in regards to setting the rollers they say to pulverise the endosperm but keep the kernel as intact as possible. Stick to that and you'll be well away mate.

Also. Get a drill..!
Milling 6.5kg grain bill will get you in shape for the national arm wrestling finals.
 
Also. Get a drill..!
Milling 6.5kg grain bill will get you in shape for the national arm wrestling finals.
Click to expand...

haha yes I will need to get a drill attachment!

My efficiency jumped 10% after buying my mill.
It's not that you'd get a better crush, it's that when you mill on the morning of a brew day you loose a lot less extract potential. After grain has been crushed it looses potential day after day, whole grains don't suffer in the same way.
Click to expand...

That type of improvement is worth the investment in the mill, I didn't realise the efficiency gains from fresh malt was that much!

Even if it's the store over the maltster, they are milling all day so surely they know the best grind? This isn't for a BIAB system, I mash in a normal mash tun.
 
Could it be that grinding fresh the enzymes don't oxidise so much so there is the maximum amount? Biology isn't my thing, but I could learn about what happens to grain for the best results :geek:

Drills are a bit noisy. If you mount your mill on a trestle there should be room for a proper geared motor next to it. I would think a wheelchair motor would be ideal.
 
jceg316 said:
haha yes I will need to get a drill attachment!



That type of improvement is worth the investment in the mill, I didn't realise the efficiency gains from fresh malt was that much!

Even if it's the store over the maltster, they are milling all day so surely they know the best grind? This isn't for a BIAB system, I mash in a normal mash tun.
Click to expand...

Then I don't know if you will see quite the jump in efficiency I think the finer crush really suits the BIAB system which will bump the efficiency up.. for a mash tun you will want a crush like what you get from the HB store if you crush fine you may get a stuck sparge
 
Dont mill grain near your fermenting beer the sweet flour will scatter and land everywhere turning moist and sticky and ideal micro life food with ambient humidity.

why not ask for a finer mill :) the malt miller mills grain to order before they moved ro swindon i would simply drive down and wait for my grain to be milled.. not as fresh as home milled prebrew but almost as good.

i buy 25kg of pale malt at a time, i cant say ive noticed any loss in efficiency and some grain has sat waiting for 6 months +..
 
It's been an interesting discussion! I think my next 25kg bag of malt purchase will be whole malt with a mill. I'm gonna get one with a drill attachment and one where you can set the fineness of the crush. Is there anything else I should look out for?
 
I think someone said, on another thread about crushing your own grain, to do it outside when you you use a drill as it creates loads of dust/flour that covers everything. A grain crusher forumite will need to confirms this though as I don't mill my own grain
 
MyQul said:
I think someone said, on another thread about crushing your own grain, to do it outside when you you use a drill as it creates loads of dust/flour that covers everything. A grain crusher forumite will need to confirms this though as I don't mill my own grain
Click to expand...

Yup, defo crush outside.
 
jceg316 said:
haha yes I will need to get a drill attachment!



That type of improvement is worth the investment in the mill, I didn't realise the efficiency gains from fresh malt was that much!

Even if it's the store over the maltster, they are milling all day so surely they know the best grind? This isn't for a BIAB system, I mash in a normal mash tun.
Click to expand...

Just thought I'd echo the efficiency increase reported in this old thread. Milled my first grain bill yesterday. An ordinary bitter so my 25 litre batch was only 3.4kg grain. When mashed the hydrometer read 1.043. That's a 98% efficiency according to my brewing app.

When I started BIAB I would get about 70%, then I went to 3 tier gravity fed and got about 85%. Now I've hit the top! Amazing.
 
I made a mistake on my last bulk ingredients order and when I opened the 25Kg bag of malt I found that I'd accidently ordered whole grain instead of crushed. So I went and ordered the grain mill you see below. It was a bit of a pain to assemble as there weren't any instructions and I did have to modify one bit a little to get it to work but I was pretty surprised at how well it worked.
So now I put my water on to heat up to mash temperature and while it's heating there's just enough time to mill the 10Lbs or so of grain I'm going to use.
First impression was how quickly the mash frothed up after adding the malt into the BIAB bag. Second was how big an OG I got from a given amount of grain. And thirdly, how low the FG was - way lower than I'm used to which suggests to me that the mash was really efficient.
Really glad I made that original mistake now.:lol:

Northern brown 26-4-16 - 2.jpg


Northern brown 26-4-16 - 3 beginning of mash.jpg
 
Unfortunately I couldn't get a grain mill in the end, long story. But I have a vacuum packer and I'm sealing all my grains after they're open to see if this holds in freshness.

I have a sack of crushed Munton's propino malt I bought back in December, still unopened, and I reckon it was sitting around the HBS for a while as well. In a brew I'll do shortly I'm gonna use it in a smash beer to see how much efficiency I can still get.
 
I`m thinking about buying a grain mill as I usually order 3 or 4 custom grain kits from Geterbrewed at a time and they can sometimes sit for 2 or 3 months before I get to use them all up.My brews are usually around 20 litres with 4-5kgs of grain,so will the mill shown above be adequate or would the one at around £120 be better?
Cheers.
 

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