Crushed or whole pale malted barley

[user 25861]

I have made the error of ordering whole grain instead of crushed PMB. Will it still mash? Do I have to crush it first? Is there a method which will still mash the starches to fermentable sugars?

 

[MyQul]

You'll have to crush it. How much did you order. I did this once, so I bought a cheapo carona knock off mill for about £20 off ebay

 

[Dutto]

It's actually Good News if you keep brewing AG.

Whole grain lasts a lot longer than pre-milled grain and a cheap mill (£20 or so) will have paid for itself by this time next year!

I used this set up when I did AG brewing.

For +/- £20, an old FV and a bit of wood (to raise it high enough to collect the milled grain) I could mill my own grain from "crushed" to "flour" depending on what I wanted.

Enjoy.

 

[GerritT]

A Victoria™ mill would cost double, but still around only £40 . For around £80 you get a 2 roller mill, and for £120 a 3 roll mill.
Get a cheap one, see how you like it (it's fairly easy) and it's convenient for partial mashers: base malt in extract, special malts home ground.

 

[MyQul]

Tbh, the mill I've got (and in dutto's piccies) is a right PITA to crush lots of grain with by hand. I now only use it to crush specialty grain which I buy whole.It does the job well for a few hundred g but for kilos of the stuff its a pain I buy my base malt crushed. The £20 mill is good if you're only ever going to use it on the stuff you accidently bought. If you think you might switch to whole grain seeing as you have to now buy some sort of mill its worth investing a bit of money

 

[Dutto]

@MyQui What does "by hand" mean?

 

[Loonytoone]

I like the idea of putting the mill in a bucket, that would save me a lot of sweeping up after grinding.
Although, I have only ground grain that I malted myself so it was probably not to the same quality as bought stuff.
On the other hand, I buy crushed grain in 25KG sacks and have not had any ill effects from keeping it for a few months.

 

[The Baron]

Its not as critical as some people say regards crushed grain I buy all my grains crushed and as long as stored dry and cool it is not a big problem I have had grain over 6 months and never noticed any real degradation of efficiency

 

[RichardM]

It's actually Good News if you keep brewing AG.

Whole grain lasts a lot longer than pre-milled grain and a cheap mill (£20 or so) will have paid for itself by this time next year!

I used this set up when I did AG brewing.

The advantage of milling the grain yourself is that you can set the crush size to suit your set up. If you are milling your base malt then you want a two or three roller mill. You won't really save much, if any, money milling it yourself once you factor in the cost of the mill.
Since I started buying whole grain and a three roller mill my efficiency has gone up, so I guess I save a bit of money by using less grain but I doubt that it is enough to pay for the mill.

 

[Bigjas]

I agree with RichardM

I bought a mill so I can alter my crush size as I use a bag in my mash tun and can go a lot finer with the crush. My efficiency has gone up and I really enjoy milling my own grain as its another part of the brewing process that I have control over. I have a 2 roller mill from Malt Miller, it is attached to the lid of an old fermenter, so no mess or dust. My cheapo cordless drill turns the mill no problem on low speed and it will do 5kgs in just a few minutes.