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Lounge Lizard · 03-06-2006, 03:06 PM

[quote=cweston]

Quote:

Originally Posted by boo boo

I actually experimented with this tonight while fixing dinner. (I had a pound of british chocolate malt, which is a lifetime supply for a small-time extract brewer.)

I threw a small handful in the blender--the results were not too good. After 3-4 1 second pulses, some grains were ground to dust, but about half were not cracked at all.

Maybe I'll try the food processor tomorrow night. I'm the cook, so SWMBO doesn't pay that much attention to wehat whacky thing I'm doing in there, as long as I dirty everything in one night.

Sorry I gave ya a bum steer. I'm going to blame the blender idea on M.R. Reese who wrote Better Beer & How to Brew It. He also states that a food processor can be used. I've never tried either one. Try at your own risk!

Darth Konvel · 03-06-2006, 03:24 PM

For small amounts of grain, I've heard throwing the grain in a big ziplock bag and then using a rolling pin to crush the grains works in a pinch. Probably would take a little while to get a decent amount crushed though.

cweston · 03-06-2006, 04:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LupusUmbrus

For small amounts of grain, I've heard throwing the grain in a big ziplock bag and then using a rolling pin to crush the grains works in a pinch. Probably would take a little while to get a decent amount crushed though.

My experience has been that this method is superior to a blender or food processor, both of which grind some grains to dust before they've broken other grains at all.

If you use a really large (1/2 gallon?) bag, it's even fairly quick for the amount of grains one uses in extract + specialty grains recipes. The only real problem is that thos big bags aren't cheap, and this process will wreck the bag (lots of little holes).

Lost · 03-07-2006, 03:00 PM

I've been thinking about using my SO's lasagna/pasta roller. The rollers for the lasanga are smooth stainless steel rollers and the gap is easily adjustable using a turn knob on the side of the thing. Both rollers turn when you crank the thing and the whole thing is stainless so clean up and care is a cinch. It seems like it would do the job very very well but there's no easy way to discharge the grains and no easy way to attach it to a bucket - that would take a bit of engineering I suppose. You could probably cut a hole in the base of it and then bolt the edges to a board (with a hole in it also) and then set that on a bucket... you'd also need to attach some sort of hopper. It would probably take a bit of work to do enough grains for a whole batch but if you're doing the extract w/grains routine then I bet it would be the best solution hands down. She said it cost $20 at one of those specialty cooking stores. I'll probably never get around to using it since she won't like me cutting it up/drilling holes in it and my LHBS mills my grains for free. I'm not planning on purchasing any grains in bulk any time soon anyway, I've got no where to put them.

As for the coffee grinder solution, I recommend against it.. you want your grains cracked, not ground.

If y'all are really interested in the pasta roller then I could post some pictures of it... let me know.