Beerfly

Recipes 

Nope, I brewed many extract kits with steeping grains from them but switched this year to AG. Now I pay much more attention to details.

pelipen

Recipes 

I've had a couple "bad" crushes from NB, but you have to figure they are crushing for the average and most likely newer AG brewer and in a mass production. You wouldn't want to be posting how you always get a stuck sparge with their crush.
I had them crush mine knowing I would soon be getting a mill. I'd love to know the average number of AG batches before people buy a mill. I think I did three. For me, it was a hell of a lot better than using a rolling pin.

It's worth telling them, because they may not know it's a problem if they hired someone new, or the mill got loose.

I'll second or third that they have stellar customer service, and their packing is the best I've ever seen.

two_one_seven

Recipes 

Let us know when they send you another batch of rye and wheat........they will BTW.

TarheelBrew13

Recipes 

My take-away from this thread is that Northern Brewer makes a lot of mistakes but that they do a great job of fixing them and are really polite to their customers.

I think it's great that they have such loyal customers that are so willing to defend them but I don't think I would order from them after this. Who wants to order there supplies, wait to receive them only to find they are somehow messed up and them wait on the fix? Not me. I think I'll just go to my LHBStore. They are really cool and if they make a mistake it can be fixed the se day. Also, I like to buy local.

thisoneguy

Recipes 

I've ordered from NB a bunch of times and never had a problem. I'm not just some NB slappy, either; I shop at my LHBS and at other online retailers, too. Don't let your takeaway from this thread be that they just make tons of mistakes.... try ordering from them once or twice and form your opinion based on your experience.

I also have a mill, so I never order crushed grains... that seems to be the easiest way to avoid the whole "the crush from the store sucked" problem.

two_one_seven

Recipes 

I'm gonna update......since I can. I emailed Dan at Northern Brewer and he said that he heard from the OP and that the are taking care of the problem. I was curious since we haven't heard anything from the OP.......

Beerfly

Recipes 

Yes, they are sending out new crushed grains. The interesting part was the PM I recieved from another member with the exact same problem. Seems he didn't want to post in this discussion because he was afraid of being bashed. I guess when the other forum members are either employees or stock holders of a company they hamper the discussion.

william_shakes_beer

Recipes 

As a new AG brewer I appreciate a pictorial of grains that are incorrectly crushed. It helps me evaluate my grains when I crush them at the LHBS. Without that I would have nothing to compare with except the guy at the counter that telling me I don't need to double crush my grains. Now I know what to look for. I understand businesses reputations are at stake. Perhaps next time the OP should omit the vender name until initial correspondence has been made.

sudsmcgee

Recipes 

My 2 cents: If you brew all grain, you must own your own mill or at least have regular access to a mill. This is not an option.

At this point you could re-mill this grain and get two batches out of it.

zachattack

Recipes 

I don't think it's any type of conspiracy, I think most people here just realize that it's not cool to publicly call someone out on a mistake before giving them a chance to fix it. This isn't the "Northern Brewer Customer Support" forum.

You even admitted yourself that you shouldn't have singled out Northern Brewer, so why are you bringing it up again?

The reason so many people are defending Northern Brewer isn't because we all worship them, or work for them, or own a share in the company, it's because we've all had very positive experiences with them and they're known for their great customer service.

In general I think homebrewers in general are a rather happy/positive bunch. Negativity is a buzz kill! We're all in this hobby together, let's keep it positive