National Homebrew Club Ireland

Brewing Discussions => Equipment & Chemicals => Topic started by: Dunkel on September 15, 2013, 12:32:27 AM

Title: Mill advice needed
Post by: Dunkel on September 15, 2013, 12:32:27 AM
OK, as an extract brewer, sometimes I need to crush some grain. This evening I did a porter brew, but couldn't find the rolling pin (which method isn't great, IMHO). So stuffed the grain into a ziplock bag, and used the side head of a hammer. Fairly disasterous (spelling?), with a lot of uncrushed grain, also a lot of flour. So I need a simple grain mill. Bearing in mind I will not be crushing more than about half a kilo of grain, and don't want to spend too much money, is this any good?
http://www.homebrewwest.ie/grain-mill-1546-p.asp
Title: Re: Mill advice needed
Post by: Ciderhead on September 15, 2013, 12:39:12 AM
Go to the front page of the forum type in Corona and you will get your answer, several in fact.
Title: Re: Mill advice needed
Post by: Dunkel on September 15, 2013, 12:48:06 AM
Thanks CH, order going in very shortly. BTW, is that the type that Partridge9 was using at the RDS?
Title: Re: Mill advice needed
Post by: Ciderhead on September 15, 2013, 01:22:35 AM
Yep
They are the step before you you spend over 100 snots
Look up the intructables on the mods it will bring 50% more to the mill
Title: Re: Mill advice needed
Post by: TheSumOfAllBeers on September 25, 2013, 01:00:35 PM
Quote from: Dunkel on September 15, 2013, 12:32:27 AM
Bearing in mind I will not be crushing more than about half a kilo of grain, and don't want to spend too much money, is this any good?
http://www.homebrewwest.ie/grain-mill-1546-p.asp

I have that mill, it is good for the volumes you talk about. And you can get a very fine crush, if you are mashing in a bag.

I have crushed full batch IPAs with it (about 6.5Kg of grain), and that can get tedious. Even when I was spinning it like I was trying to hoist a spinnaker it took me over 30 mins to fully crush the grain. I now buy all my base malt pre-crushed and only mill my specialty malts.

It has a few other annoying issues with it:

- the feed hopper is too small
- the dispense end is not ducted, so without a proper workbench setup you can't feed into a deep container
- you can get grains spat backwards from the mill, which can make a mess

all the same though, I find it a good mill, but if I was doing larger batches I would probably want a mill that can take torque from a cordless drill
Title: Re: Mill advice needed
Post by: Covey on September 25, 2013, 06:30:48 PM
Hi,
Have a look at this threads, im happy with it. I use a drill and get through a full grain bill in less than 15 that even with refilling the hopper twice. The Hopper holds about 3kgs.

http://www.nationalhomebrewclub.com/forum/index.php/topic,3696.msg47221.html#msg47221
Title: Re: Mill advice needed
Post by: Blueshed on September 28, 2013, 08:47:59 AM
got the same mill as a birthday present http://www.homebrewwest.ie/grain-mill-1546-p.asp

used it for the first time yesterday and found I had a lot of dust from just 400g of grain, used 2 muslin bags when steeping the grain.

plan on a 2nd brew this wend so will play around with it a bit more.