Who mills their own grain?

[Baldbrewer]

As the title suggests who mills their own grain?

Do you notice an increase in efficiency compared to pre-milled grain?

I'd also be interested in responses from other Braumiester owners as to what gap they use for the best efficiency .
:thumb: :

 

[joe1002]

I buy mine pre-milled. I have thought of milling my own and may do in the future, just not yet.

I buy a 25kg sack and use it within 6 months so don't have any problems.

 

[Aleman]

Do you notice an increase in efficiency compared to pre-milled grain?

It doesn't drive me (efficiency), I do get better lautering from my own milling though, and a better crush although that is probably down to conditioning the malt before crushing.

I bought my own mill because I wanted to brew some of the Durden park beers which require the production of pale amber malts which are diastatic, and they are not available from maltsters. you can only do that with whole malt. The other reason for buying my own was the price was right and the exchange rate made it even more favourable.

 

[rpt]

I buy most of my malt from the Malt Miller and he crushes it fine as I do BIAB. There is some dispute as to whether it helps efficiency though. He crushes to order so it's probably the freshest you can get without crushing it yourself.

 

[Hawks]

I buy most of my malt from the Malt Miller and he crushes it fine as I do BIAB. There is some dispute as to whether it helps efficiency though. He crushes to order so it's probably the freshest you can get without crushing it yourself.

Me too, and I get through 25kg of the pale malt in a couple of months.

Of course, I'm never going to say never, but the list of other things I want more is still long :whistle:

 

[Bopper]

I've got my own grain mill, used it once a long time ago for making pale-amber malt that i malted in the oven. I do not thing you will beat un-crushed for freshness, but referring to milling, if you don't get things right your efficiency will be way down. I always buy crushed grain because i do not brew on a large enough scale to save money and i will save time+ hassle. Our cousin's across the pond, its just a part of brewing!


Richard

 

[zgoda]

I consider buying my own grain mill as the most valuable spending on this hobby. I can stock much more malt, and use it whenever I wish. And I can brew the most bizzare beers with peas, buckwheat or lentils. :)

I don't mill too fine so my efficiency is standard 80% all the time.

 

[phettebs]

When I first went AG and didn't know what efficiency even was and how to measure it. When I figured out how, I found I was getting around 58%. All I knew was that when I brewed a recipe that said I should get and OG of 1.052 or something, I was well below that. I asked around on forums and pretty much everyone asked me if I bought pre-crushed or crushed my own. I bought it crushed. They told me that the shops use a wider gap on their mills which is better for fly sparging.

Since I was a software developer, I wrote my own application where I could enter a recipe, click a button, and then have it tell me how much extra grain I needed to reach my target OG based on my efficiency. That worked great and I just had to purchase more grain to get what I needed.

Eventually, I bought my own mill and set my gap to .035 and my efficiency jumped up to the low to mid 80s without making any other changes to my process. I don't condition or do anything other than run it through the mill. I'm quite happy with my mill and how it fits into my process. I just keep 25kg sacks of malt along with smaller amounts of specialty grains on hand and I can brew whenever I have the time. I don't need to plan ahead and buy supplies unless it's way outside the norm of what I typically do.

 

[clibit]

I crush my own in a Corona mill that was about £23 plus delivery. It's a bit of a chore but it works. I've done two brews with my cooler mash tun ( I did maxi BIAB before) and got 70% efficiency on the first (batch sparge) and 77% on the second (continuous sparge), so I think that's pretty good. I'm considering buying crushed pale malt though, and just crushing the other grains myself, as I have got through a sack in about 4 months, and it's a bit of a drag hand-milling 4 or 5kg of grain at the start of a long brewing day. Uncrushed grain does keep fresher longer though.

 

[Dave1970]

I have a cheap and fairly crappy hand mill. I buy my big volumes of malt ready crushed, but speciality malts whole. This gives a longer shelf life for those malts that I use only rarely.

 

[IPA]

As the title suggests who mills their own grain?

Do you notice an increase in efficiency compared to pre-milled grain?

I'd also be interested in responses from other Braumiester owners as to what gap they use for the best efficiency .
:thumb: :

I've had Braumeisters for about five years and have always crushed my own and just recently I narrowed the gap on the rollers and it seemed that my efficiency improved at the same time. When I get a minute I will check the gap and let you know. I crush for two reasons 1 It is very difficult to buy ready crushed here in France and 2 I am not 100% convinced that suppliers vacuum their mills between crushing different malts.

 

[brewtim]

I crush with a Corona and brew with a Braumeister, unfortunately the corona doesn't have settings, so I've no idea what the gap is, but I crush a little finer than the Malt Miller and get 75-85% efficiency (dependent on other factors also). I also condition my grain around 30 mins before crushing.

 

[evanvine]

I crush my own malt purely for consistency.
I found, particularly in larger bags of pre crush, that the husks tended to rise to the top and the "flour" gravitated to the bottom.