I’ve had a Barley Crusher since 2007, and it’s been a great mill. I did have to replace the rollers in 2016 but otherwise haven’t had any real issues with it. However, I recently purchased a Monster Mill, and it is a huge improvement in build quality.
If you use a drill this probably won’t matter much to you, but I usually mill by hand and it’s huge: the Barley Crusher takes 51 revolutions to crush a pound of grain, and the MM only takes 28. It almost cuts the milling time in half.
Below is what the crush looks like with the gap set at .042. It’s a lot less flour than I’m used to. I’m brewing with it for the first time today, so I’ll have to see if efficiency takes a hit.
Eventually, the knurling on the rollers will wear out to the point where the grain will no longer feed through. They sell replacement rollers for $50. Otherwise, you can switch the rollers around so that the driven roller is in the back and turns counter clockwise. That will buy you some time.
I got my typical efficiency for a no sparge batch, so I don’t see any need to tighten the gap on the MM. I’m really happy with it so far.
Do you get a 2-roller or a 3-roller MM? I had a Barley Crusher for years, and it served me quite well, but once the knurling wore out I decided to upgrade to a 3-roller Monster Mill. It is definitely a solidly built machine. I too noticed less flour than usual with my crush while getting comparable efficiency. I assumed it was from having a 3rd roller, but maybe there’s something else going on with the construction of the mill itself.
