Grain Mills
 

Thinking about getting a grain mill. What do you think about the Barley Crusher?
http://www.barleycrusher.com/images/barleycrushers.jpg

I am very happy with mine. Go for the 15# hopper. Barley Crushers Rock! :rockin:

http://www.krach.org/Homebrew/MyBarleyCrusher.jpg

I have a crankandstein. I haven't crushed a full batch of grain yet, I've only played with it... however, I will say I'm not so enthralled that I would advocate it over the barleycrusher. I'm sure they each have their issues.

Wha-wha-what?!?! I am getting ready to make a purchase of a grain mill soon too and the Crankandstein was at the top of my list. COuld you please elaborate why your excitment level is lower than I would expect it to be with this product?

I problably went through 2 pounds of grain to get the crush I wanted from my Barley Crusher. I kept the box it came in and that's how I store it. When I need it, I pull it out, slap my grain in and hook up my Ryobi cordless drill to it. A couple minutes later, I'm ready to mash. When I'm done, I clean with an air gun off my cheapo Lowe's compressor. It blows all the flour and dust off and the roller stay nice and clean. It then goes back in the box and on top of my beer fridge in the garage till the next brew day.

I bought the combo, the mill, hopper, and base.

The quality is nice enough throughout however... it's a touch more money than the barley crusher and the hopper is smaller. Also, the driven roller can hardly be turned by hand. I don't want to say it's binding, but it can't be hand turned like you'd expect something with bushings to do. It's no big deal. My cordless drill handles the job effortlessly. However, it's indicative of a less than perfect alignment.

Again, it works fine and if their warranty is as good as they say, it's just a matter of sending it back for replacement parts. Also, I could probably fix the problem just by redrilling the holes on the base a little bit to get it to line up better. However, if I wanted to do that work, I would've just made my own base to begin with.

I bought the 3 roller crankandstein and have had no issues with it. I mounted it myself and made my own hopper that will hold ~12 lbs of grain. I can mill that much easily in under a minute. Very easy to adjust the gap. I just need a drill with more torque. With a small gap, hard grains like wheat and rye can stall out my drill. If I make the gap wider, no problems, but a less fine (but still acceptable) crush.

I suspect the three roller mill does not have the problem that my 2 roller mill has because the 3rd roller gives it extra torsional and lateral rigidity. I'm sure the 3 roller version is the best of both worlds. I feel as though they sell a 3-roller version to avoid the problems with the 2 roller version. That's unfortunate.

Again though, I'm not ready to throw out the mill. It may yet prove itself to be a durable and functional unit.

Man this thread reminds me of my list of 'to-do's'....gotta motorize my MaltMill. One dday I came into work and saw the industrial paper shredder in the garbage (well resting by it anyhow). The casing had broken, the motor is in perfect shape. Low RPM, high torque baby.