I’ve been taking more care to condition my malt lately. I run it through the mill twice, once at 1.5mm (0.060") and the second time at 0.5mm (0.020"). What do you think?
Looks better than mine, and I am getting 95-100% conversion efficiency according to Kai’s chart.
Looks a lot like mine after one pass through my JSP MaltMill
Denny- Do you think it’s my mill, or operator error?
When I was dry-crushing the grain, I was getting lots of shredded husks. Conditioning helped, but I was still getting a fair amount of broken husks. Conditioning + double grind gives me mostly intact husks.
Frankly, I don’t worry much about shredded husks. If that crush works for you, it’s the right crush.
I don’t really get the concern about shredded husk. How is one supposed to release the germ without shredding a little husk?
The husks in your crush look to be fairly in tack. It looks good to me.
My understanding about shredding the husks too much is that it can cause problems in your mash by not setting up a good filter bed or a stuck mash. And the small pieces can cause more tannin extraction. I’ve never seen the tannin thing myself but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. I have had some serious stuck mashes over the years.
Paul
419 batches, 0 stuck runoffs.
i have run small amounts of grain through my vita mix to a flour and have not had a problem. of course i brew small amounts and i mash in a bag and still get pretty clear wort.
Why the extra work?
Were you having trouble with stuck sparges, or astringent flavor?
I condition & grind once, through a Barley Crusher set to .024".
I don’t have either problem.
That’s a much finer grist than I get. Maybe I should adjust my mill. But, like Denny says, I get good results, so why change? (well, he didn’t say I DO get good results, just “why change”)
Years ago I had a run of 7 or 8 astringent batches. I was doing BIAB. I had switched to a paint strainer bag which was much coarser than the cheesecloth bags I had been using. I was shredding my husks pretty badly. I was squeezing the bag like it owed me money. I was ending up with a lot of husk material in the BK. I was basically doing everything wrong, except my mash pH and sparge water temp, which were in the right range.
Because of that, I’m concerned about shredded husks. Too concerned? Probably. It takes maybe three minutes or so to reset my mill’s gap and run the grist through again. So in the course of a brewday, it’s hardly any additional work. Necessary? Probably not, since it sounds like it’s a lot more fussing than you guys do.
Having mostly intact husks does lauter much better, and I haven’t needed rice hulls when using a lot of wheat. I get a lot of flour because of the fine crush, but the husks set the grain bed up pretty well.
So, I dunno. I guess I just wanted to see if this was a “typical” crush or not.
Your crush looks good, but I think double crushing at 2 different settings is unnecessary and overdoing it. But I’m not really one to talk, I can’t seem to figure out why my efficiency is around 72% at a .0035" mill setting with proper water adjustments. It’s a mystery, but at least it’s consistent.
My crush looks kinda like that. I was conditioning for a while, then decided that it’s not really worth it for me.
I run extra hard stuff like malted rye or wheat through my mill twice put that is about it. I am going to brew with malted spelt in a couple months so that will probably go through twice as well.
RE: double crush - I was trying to simulate a 3-roller mill. The first pass at 1.5mm just kinda squishes it, then the second pass at 0.5mm does the milling. It’s going through the mill a total of 2 times, I’m not double-crushing at both settings.
I might be able to get it down to one pass. I haven’t tried doing single grinds since I’ve been conditioning the malt better, so maybe that will be the ticket.
Are you using a drill or hand cranking? Since I hand crank my barley crusher, I’d NOT want to run it through twice, too much work. You must have a quicker adjusting mill also. Either way, whatever works for you…
I have a Monster Mill with a drill. It adjusts pretty easily. I try to question the way I do things, and do them more simply when appropriate. It works for me, but the reason for this thread was to get some feedback and maybe come up with a better way.
Monster Mill (original two roller) here also. I see pretty much no efficiency difference between all barley batches and batches with 60%/40% wheat/barley. I only run through once and the gap is set to .035.
I haven’t checked my mill gap lately but when I set it up it was .029". I typically only run the grain through once and get a fair amount of flour. The husks are intact (for the most part) with or without conditioning my grain. My efficiency stays pretty constant.
I have had a stuck sparge or two but I only recall them happening when I cranked the mill down to .025". that was just a bit too tight. I have more issues with rye malt than with wheat but that’s a slow sparge, not a stuck sparge. I cause most of my own sparging problems.
Cleaning out the gutters last Saturday I thought about kilning the maple tree seeds. They had already sprouted. I’m not sure I could ever get that flavor out of my mill though and my wife was quite opposed to the idea. 8)
As was said earlier, do what works for you. There are many paths to the same destination. ;D
Paul