Barleycrusher setting

I just finished my first attempt at all grain yesterday. It is Ed Worts haus pale ale. I added an extra pound of grain because i anticipated a low pre boil OG. The pre boil OG for 6.5 gallons was 1.041. The post boil was good at 1.06.

I mashed at 152 deg for an hour in 14.5 qts water and double batch sparged with about 4 1/2 gallons of 180 deg water. I figure the crush from AHS was a little light?

I broke down and ordered a Barleycrusher from Northernbrewer.com and an IPA all grain kit.

What is the best setting to use to "roll my own"?

You are going to have to play with it, some people leave it at the factory .038".
I have mine at .025" and I am going to bump it back to .030"
It also depends on your manifold, I have cpvc with 1/16" holes instead of slits cut in it.
I used to have a manifold with slits and it let all kinds of material through, ever since switching to the holes, I have little to no material coming through, which allows me a finer crush.

Hope this helps.
Josh

I just used my new BC for the first time today, set at the factory setting. The crush is SO much finer than what you would get from, for example, Northern Brewer.

I left it stock to see if, and how much, the efficiency will improve over precrushed grain.

I believe the factory setting .039 or at least that is what Ray the owner told me when I bought mine. I have adjusted mine down to .035 and I get and avg of 83% efficiency and use a cpvc manifold.

Thanks for the replys, i will leave it at default for the first batch. Them maybe adjust down a bit. Is it east to adjust?

BullF-16 said:

Thanks for the replys, i will leave it at default for the first batch. Them maybe adjust down a bit. Is it east to adjust?

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Yes, it's easy if you have a set of feeler gauges. I'd suggest checking yours before using it for the first time, mine came from the factory with uneven settings. It was .039 on one end, and considerably wider on the other.

BlindLemonLars said:

Yes, it's easy if you have a set of feeler gauges. I'd suggest checking yours before using it for the first time, mine came from the factory with uneven settings. It was .039 on one end, and considerably wider on the other.

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agreed........

BlindLemonLars said:

Yes, it's easy if you have a set of feeler gauges. I'd suggest checking yours before using it for the first time, mine came from the factory with uneven settings. It was .039 on one end, and considerably wider on the other.

Click to expand...

+2
Mine must have been assembled on a Monday morning. I had like .040 on one end and .043 on the other. I was getting 70% efficiency with that.

I followed the instructions that came with my BC an didn't bother to break out the gauges to double check the gap. One of the non-concentric bushings that adjust the gap must be in 180° out of alignment with the knob, because the gap gets wider when the instructions say it should be getting tighter.

Bottom line: get out your feeler gauges and check the gap at both ends.

Mine's now set at .038" on both ends, and I am planning on using it this Saturday. We'll see if my eff. goes up, but I'm really hoping it does better than the 59% I got when I misaligned it using just the instructions and I was too lazy to actually measure the gap. Lesson learned here.