Crush, Crush, Crush!
 

I know it's been said before, but crush is soooo important. After strugling with very poor efficiency for some time, I finally sacked up and tightened my mill down farther than I was previously comfortable with (I'm currently using a hand-me-down Corona mill). Low and behold, 20% increase in eff!

Gotta get that BC!

yea +1

I motorized a corona and cranked it down pretty tight. Crush (or some might say shred) seems pretty good w/ excellent results.

w/ a 20% jump in eff., are you sure you need a BC? Not convinced I need one.

Mikw

Yeah it does make a difference. When I make my Hefe's I have to crush them separate, the Pils and the Wheat. As long as your sparge is going smoothly and you don't shred the husks, you should be ok.

I just saw another post about having to do wheat seperately. I have a motorized Valley Mill that I bought used and my friends and I used it for the first time on our last brew (which had no wheat).

Do you need to change the settings for wheat? If so, smaller or wider gap? Or is it just that the two don't play well together?

rye and wheat need closer gap. I found out the hard way this weekend,

Wheat has no husk and is a smaller kernel, so a tighter gap is in order. I tighten my mill and crush the wheat first, then open the gap for the barley. My reasoning is that the barley will kind of flush the wheat out of the mill.

I doubt that part of it makes a difference, but it's part of my routine.

I'm using a Barley Crusher. Any suggestions on the gap size for crushing wheat with it?

I have a Barley Crusher and I mill my wheat and barley at the same gap (factory setting). I brewed a Franziskahner clone with 7lbs of wheat and about 3lbs of barley and got a little above 70% efficiency (batch sparging). If you're really paranoid, I guess you could run the wheat through a second time, but as long as you don't see a lot of whole or nearly whole wheat kernels, I think you should be OK.

hmmm this came to mind for some reason when I read the title.

Whats the downside of crushing too tightly, (too much)? Logic would tell me husks getting in the wort and causing astringency, anything else besides the obvious?