Northern Brewer Grain is not looking so good

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Seems like Mr. Farley has not had the retaining class!!! I hope they can trace the crush back to the person if it is the same person and show them the door or maybe move them to a new position say custodial engineer maybe? :rocking:
 
Seriously? I've read it'll all now. It seems as though this thread should be locked now. Nothing useful is coming from further "discussion".
 
Seriously? I've read it'll all now. It seems as though this thread should be locked now. Nothing useful is coming from further "discussion".

Really wow. I picture you waving your hand and telling the servant to take this one away because it's not "useful".

People get what they want out of stuff. I think the guy who had his question about his crush got something "useful" out of it.
 
Seriously? I've read it'll all now. It seems as though this thread should be locked now. Nothing useful is coming from further "discussion".

Well, by all means, report it to a mod if that's how you feel and you'll find out if they agree. I'm inclined to think they won't, but I don't pretend to know for sure.
 
Already got a reply back from NB offering to send me a replacement grain bill. Great company that I'll continue to purchase from. I certainly hope they get this issue completely worked out.

Glad this got handled by CS. Obviously, it's much better for us both if we get it right the first time. We do make mistakes, and we count all of our 'goofs' (both the ones we catch in internal QC and the ones that make it to the customer). Errors are less than 1%, but IMO errors should be less than 0.1%! (At the current rate we f*** up an order almost every day and we don't want that!!) We do give feedback to the team on issues like this, but to make significant improvements we need to improve the process, not sack people for an error. If somebody makes a LOT of errors, and coaching fails, then yes, we will show them the door.

And we are improving the process substantially. For example, we recently put our mills on a preventative maintenance schedule, which actually will help some crush issues. You can't believe how much wear and tear we put on our poor little Barley Crushers. We're also in the process now of revamping the whole order picking process with an goal of lowering cost (so we can keep your costs low) and improving quality (so we don't f*** up as many orders).

I really do appreciate the feedback. Feedback will make us better!
 
Glad this got handled by CS. Obviously, it's much better for us both if we get it right the first time. We do make mistakes, and we count all of our 'goofs' (both the ones we catch in internal QC and the ones that make it to the customer). Errors are less than 1%, but IMO errors should be less than 0.1%! (At the current rate we f*** up an order almost every day and we don't want that!!) We do give feedback to the team on issues like this, but to make significant improvements we need to improve the process, not sack people for an error. If somebody makes a LOT of errors, and coaching fails, then yes, we will show them the door.

And we are improving the process substantially. For example, we recently put our mills on a preventative maintenance schedule, which actually will help some crush issues. You can't believe how much wear and tear we put on our poor little Barley Crushers. We're also in the process now of revamping the whole order picking process with an goal of lowering cost (so we can keep your costs low) and improving quality (so we don't f*** up as many orders).

I really do appreciate the feedback. Feedback will make us better!

Cudos! :rockin:
 
Glad this got handled by CS. Obviously, it's much better for us both if we get it right the first time. We do make mistakes, and we count all of our 'goofs' (both the ones we catch in internal QC and the ones that make it to the customer). Errors are less than 1%, but IMO errors should be less than 0.1%! (At the current rate we f*** up an order almost every day and we don't want that!!) We do give feedback to the team on issues like this, but to make significant improvements we need to improve the process, not sack people for an error. If somebody makes a LOT of errors, and coaching fails, then yes, we will show them the door.

And we are improving the process substantially. For example, we recently put our mills on a preventative maintenance schedule, which actually will help some crush issues. You can't believe how much wear and tear we put on our poor little Barley Crushers. We're also in the process now of revamping the whole order picking process with an goal of lowering cost (so we can keep your costs low) and improving quality (so we don't f*** up as many orders).

I really do appreciate the feedback. Feedback will make us better!

Cmon guys, can't really do better than that! THIS is the reason I order from NB.
Great selection, easy to navigate website, and great customer support. rock on Chris!
 
Cmon guys, can't really do better than that! THIS is the reason I order from NB.
Great selection, easy to navigate website, and great customer support. rock on Chris!

Just awesome. I wish NB was still my LHBS :(

FWIW, I just ordered my first all grain kit from NB and specifically asked for double crush for BIAB. Wasnt sure about the crush (not that I have anything to compare to) so I crushed some by hand with a rolling pin. 75% efficiency on the first go round. Seems ok, but not sure how much the hand crushing improved things.

Anyway, love me some NB.
 
Isn't this always the way it is? Complain first ask questions later? How many times do people ***** about things but don't comment when things are done right? I've never ordered from nb, but if i didn't have two lhbs within 15 mins i would.
 
Isn't this always the way it is? Complain first ask questions later? How many times do people ***** about things but don't comment when things are done right? I've never ordered from nb, but if i didn't have two lhbs within 15 mins i would.

Why bump a thread that was stagnet for 2 months then??????/
 
beating_a_dead_horse.jpg
 
LandoLincoln said:
That's not ironic. That's redundant.

I would go with ironic. considered rationally, one would not expect someone who disliked complaining to complain. Ergo, complaining about complaining is ironic. The literal meaning that one ought not complain is contrasted against the fact that the speaker is in fact complaining.
 
You blew my mind, man.
I would go with ironic. considered rationally, one would not expect someone who disliked complaining to complain. Ergo, complaining about complaining is ironic. The literal meaning that one ought not complain is contrasted against the fact that the speaker is in fact complaining.
 
I've never understood the concept of irony.

Where it gets confusing is there's so many damn kinds! There's verbal irony. There's dramatic irony. There's situational irony. And apparently there's cosmic irony, which is a new one to me. The thing I dislike about cosmic irony ("the disparity between human desires and the harsh realities of the outside world") is that it makes the alanis morisette actual meet one of the definitions of irony. Which it should absolutely not. Therefore, i reject cosmic irony as a concept.
 
The best test to determine is something is irony is to see if a magnet will stick to it. Works!

:mug:

Except for many stainless steels, which are quite, although not fully, irony, yet not magnetic. Again, the test for "is it ironic" is not foolproof! ARGH!!
 
I would go with ironic. considered rationally, one would not expect someone who disliked complaining to complain. Ergo, complaining about complaining is ironic. The literal meaning that one ought not complain is contrasted against the fact that the speaker is in fact complaining.

Now you're just being pedantic.
 
BrewKnurd said:
Except for many stainless steels, which are quite, although not fully, irony, yet not magnetic. Again, the test for "is it ironic" is not foolproof! ARGH!!

Add to that the fact that nickel is magnetic and not at all irony. Now that's ironic.
 
Well, I see this thread went off on quite a tangent. Not only am I going to dredge it back up, but also bring it back on topic.

First the good:
I ordered an all-grain kit and a 16 oz bottle of Star San from Northern Brewer. I received a box coated with about 8 oz of Star San, yes half leaked out. It looked like the top of the bottle was smashed against something, puncturing the foil seals and unseating the threads enough to allow leakage.

I spent 3 minutes using the online chat, explained what happened and told them I only needed an 8 oz bottle since half was still in the original bottle. The customer service rep said she could send either an 8 oz or 16 oz, I told her to surprise me. UPS drops off the box 2 days later, 16 oz bottle. I have enough sanitizer for 2 years:)

Now the bad:
It looks like they are still having the same problems with crush. I received my grain and it looked only very lightly crushed. It had the slightest amount of flour in the bottom of the bag, all the husks were still intact. I have two kids under 3, so my brew days are planned well in advance so working in a 2 hour trip to the LHBS is out of the question. I brewed. . . . . . and got 50% efficiency. I discovered this thread after brewing so I did not take pictures, but the grain looked exactly like the pictures in the first post. I hope Mr Farley is still reading this thread.

In the future I will certainly add comments to the remarks section of my order asking for double milling or set the mill at 0.020" or both.
 
I think crush problems at Northern Brewer are just a fact of life. I quit buying from them in 2008 after my shipment of grains was poorly crushed and led to a 59% efficiency. Perhaps they'll eventually change their philosophy to crushing, because I'd certainly like to have them as an option.
 
Either get your own grain mill or forget about all your other toys and go back to bring extract or else you will never know what you are doing no matter how good you are.
Complete and total BS!!! So, which mill manufacturer do you work for?

The same could be said for not growing/malting/roasting your own grains or growing your own hops and doing the AA analysis yourself or not brewing with distilled water and altering the minerals yourself.
 
Complete and total BS!!! So, which mill manufacturer do you work for?...
+1. If they're going to mill the grain, they should do it right.

I'm also surprised that asking for double-milling is considered acceptable. So I have to give them "Special Instructions" to do their job correctly? That's a hoot.

Or alternatively, we're supposed to break out a rolling pin and hump it all morning to fix their problem? Puuulease.
 
Earlier this month I brewed NB's Oktoberfest AG kit with pre-milled grains and obtained an efficiency of 83%. I do not have a picture of the grains because at the time that I received them, they appeared to be what I expected and similar to what I achieve on my BC with the gap set to 0.035. For the record, I got the grains pre-milled because I forgot to order them unmilled.

So, put me in the satisfied category. I don't get why others claim such poor efficiencies, but then again, those people tend not to post any other aspects of their process for scrutiny. All I know is that "poor crush" is not the only factor which can affect efficiency.
 
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