Grain crushing question

I have a question about grain. I buy all my grains from my LHBS and have it run through their mill. I notice that I get a lot of "dust" from the grains. It is hooked up to a drill. Is this "dust" good, bad or does it have any effect at all on anything?

You really don't want the crush to end up with a lot of dust (flour) but you'll always get some. So it is starch... which you want, but you don't want to try to mash flour... as it would get stuck. So some OK, lots (like most of your grain bill) not so good.

I got tired of having the same issue a few years ago and got a grain mill. Now I buy only uncrushed grains. I condition my grains with a spray bottle and around 3 oz. of water before crushing and never have flour to deal with. You will also notice that your grain husks are intact even with a finer crush giving you a noticeable increase in efficiency and a reduced chance of stuck sparges. With LHBS crushed grains, I rarely exceeded 68% eff. After switching to conditioning and crushing, I usually get between 75% and 80%. It's a little more work, but well worth the benefit to me.

Man my LHBS must be unique. Their grain mills are adjustable, and customers can adjust them, to whatever you want from flour to just making noise while whole grain falls through.

postal_penguin said:

Man my LHBS must be unique. Their grain mills are adjustable, and customers can adjust them, to whatever you want from flour to just making noise while whole grain falls through.

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I was'nt so lucky. My LHBS pre-crushes 50lbs at a time of most of their stock and keeps it in plastic trash cans. They don't even like to open bags to sell small quanities ( 10 lbs or less ) of uncrushed grains. I generally have to purchase my 2-row in 50 lb bags and then order uncrushed specialty malts from online shops.

Nuggethead said:

I was'nt so lucky. My LHBS pre-crushes 50lbs at a time of most of their stock and keeps it in plastic trash cans. They don't even like to open bags to sell small quanities ( 10 lbs or less ) of uncrushed grains. I generally have to purchase my 2-row in 50 lb bags and then order uncrushed specialty malts from online shops.

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You'd think that would lead to a lot of stale grains. My LHBS has all their grain uncrushed but has two mills that are free to use right there. I buy in bulk and take the grain back in to crush.

I love conditioning my grain. I do it as well. I get flour but I also crush on a super tight setting. The husks mostly remain intact but I get up to 85% for a single infusion and as high as 97% with a decoction, typically about 90-95%. Again, some flour isn't bad. It's really about your husks not being shredded and doing something crazy like using pumpkin without rice hulls.

I was on the fence about crushing and conditioning for some time and read many posts on the subject, but once I did it and saw the results, it became my regular procedure for all batches.

This may be a silly question, but would the moisture from conditioning the grain have any effect on a cast iron Corona style mill? I know those things are prone to rust if you're not careful. I assume the amount of water is minimal enough to not really create too much residual moisture, but if anyone has experience with this, feel free to chime in.

Having some flour is not a big deal. I do BIAB so it doesn't effect me except for a possible dough ball problem. My LHBS also has two adjustable mills and crushes right then and there.They will do whtever kind of crush you want. They also have about 40 grains, 30 yeasts, and 40 hops all the time, so I guess I'm pretty lucky compaired to some of the guys that have to order over the net, and live with what they get.

I love these photos showing a good crush. Just like goldilocks, not too much, not too little.

~SB

borden said:

This may be a silly question, but would the moisture from conditioning the grain have any effect on a cast iron Corona style mill? I know those things are prone to rust if you're not careful. I assume the amount of water is minimal enough to not really create too much residual moisture, but if anyone has experience with this, feel free to chime in.

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For stuff like this start warming the oven to a low temp, then turn off at 120 to 150 degrees. Throw stuff in there to dry and it won't rust.

rockgardenlove said:

For stuff like this start warming the oven to a low temp, then turn off at 120 to 150 degrees. Throw stuff in there to dry and it won't rust.

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+1 to this

Nuggethead said:

I was'nt so lucky. My LHBS pre-crushes 50lbs at a time of most of their stock and keeps it in plastic trash cans. They don't even like to open bags to sell small quanities ( 10 lbs or less ) of uncrushed grains. I generally have to purchase my 2-row in 50 lb bags and then order uncrushed specialty malts from online shops.

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This is terrible practice. Aside from staling, the fines will settle to the bottom and husks will rise to the top as the container is handled.

Adam

adamreef said:

This is terrible practice. Aside from staling, the fines will settle to the bottom and husks will rise to the top as the container is handled.

Adam

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Exactly !!, It made repeatability in recipes very difficult. Efficiencies differed from 10lbs from the top vs. the same amount from the bottom of the container. New brewers were complaining of stuck sparges when it normally wouldn't have been a problem. It was actually an employee of the shop that took me aside and told me to start crushing my own if I wanted to brew better beers.

ShinyBuddha said:

I love these photos showing a good crush. Just like goldilocks, not too much, not too little.

~SB

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+1...great pics. Since i started milling my own I have been getting 80% efficiency.

A little dated thread, but seemed a decent place to share these pictures. Today I was brewing a porter and decided to try steeping the specialty grains (except some flaked oats) separately. In my haste, I forgot to crush them first. So I drained them with a strainer, then milled them. I had tried conditioning my grain with spray bottle once a couple years ago and wasn't happy with the mess it left in the mill. So I milled my base grain first (100% pilsner) figuring I may make a mess and to keep the dark malts completely separate. Then I milled the wet grain. You can clearly see the husks are nearly full intact on the specialty grains. The grains are cracked though. There were about 3 pounds of specialty grains, steeped 2 hours first in 3L of water at an initial temp of 132F. Then drained, that wort set aside and another 2.5L of wort from my main mash added for another rest starting at 140F for another hour and a half. The resultant gravity was very hazy 16 Brix in the refractometer. The pre-boil gravity of the main mash was 11.7 Brix. So it seem that there was still plenty of a crush to enable dissolving of the sugars in the crystal malts. I did have some gummy paste in the mill after finished, but easy enough to clean up. I might try this on a future batch for full mash.