To paraphrase…“they’re not really rules. They’re more like guidelines”
Crush til you’re scared
You do know that you have a mill that is better than all of the mills available today? Jack Schmidling may have been a horse’s backside with whom to deal as a human being, but he produced a superior mill (I am absolutely certain that his cantankerous attitude was due to this knowledge). I put over 1000 pounds of malt through my first Model P and it was barely broken in before I sold it. At this point, the Monster Mill is the gold standard, but it pales in comparison to the basic Schmidling malt mill.
Cool. I use that one as well.
It may very well be a sub-par, or more likely, just an “all purpose” crush. The LHBS has a section for “Notes” on their order form where I’m sure I could put “Crush my grains till you’re scared” but I’m brewing with 13.5# of flour takes a whole new level of skill that I just don’t have yet.
Is there some metric for specifying a “grade” of crush or the mill setting? I guess there’s a gap you could specify?
0.025-0.030 inch. Thinner (tighter) than a credit card.
A mill is still one of my best investments. My efficiency immediately jumped 8 points and became more consistent once I didn’t have to rely on the lhbs. I rarely go beyond a 45 min mash with normal styles.
Thanks! I’ll keep that in mind for the next order. Assuming this gap would apply whether it’s base or adjunct malts (well, I would assume something like faked oats wouldn’t apply)? They usually mix all the grains together unless you ask to bag separately.
To be honest, I’ve looked at various models on different sites and watched a few videos on the topic but haven’t really dug into it deeply. Part of the issue is the price vs. quality, the other issue is buying grain in bulk.
How long is a 50# sack of 2-row good for? It would take me a good four months to go through one of those. I’ve read about grain getting old from sitting around but if you have in air-tight container in a dry, cool basement, how long is it good for?
I’d say well more than 4 months.
I’ll second that a grain mill was the single most useful investment I’ve made when it comes to brewing. The most important thing it did was give me consistent efficiency. When I was getting crushed grain from multiple online and LHBS my efficiency would swing by as much as 10% from batch to batch. After a couple of batches to dial in my crush my efficiencies are within a 2% range pretty consistently.
A sack of uncrushed grain will store well in a cool dry place for at least a couple of years (and I’ve gone a lot longer than that to be honest). But if you’re concerned, just buy 5 or 10 pounds at a time.
Also, I sincerely doubt any homebrew shop will set their mill to a specific gap setting for you (especially one as tight as Dave recommends), but if you have a good LHBS that isn’t super busy they might be able to run your grain through the mill a second time which will get you a bit of a finer crush.
I buy one sack of pils which I use as my base malt for almost everything. Probably lasts me about 4-5 months and I have yet to have any problems with freshness.
I keep less than 10 pounds of Munich I and II around and purchase my specialty malts separately per batch.
Lately I’ve been brewing with malt that’s 8+ years old. Unopened bags, mainly, stored in plastic storage tubs. The beers have been great.
I had no idea grain could last this long in storage. I had read/heard something about grain gets old after sitting around for a month or so. That seemed a little questionable though since breweries gotta be buying this stuff by the truckload and storing it somehow. Good to know, thanks all!
Crushed grain definitely has a shorter shelf life, so maybe that’s what you were thinking of? Remember that this is an agricultural product that only gets harvested 1-2 times a year. We have beer year round, so at least some of that is made with grain that is close to a year old.
When we did an experiment about how long crushed grain would last, someone contacyednBriess. They said their pre crushed malt in unopened bags was good for 2 years.
I believe I read a farmer’s input on another forum where he described the grain’s field to LHBS timeline. If I remember correctly it was yrs long vs months long timeline before we even see it.
Denny, do their bags have any sort of plastic sheeting that make the sacks air-tight? I could imagine that any semblance of air-tightness would help longevity.
No idea. I haven’t used Briess in 20 years. The 8+ year old malt I’ve been using recently (not precrushed) is Rahr and Best. Rahr doesnt line the bags. Don’t recall about Best.
That’s probably it. I think the discussion I retained was around extract kits and shelf life but there was a mention of grain so must have been the crushed malts that come with those.