Grain Mill broke at store

OK so yesterday I go and get 14lbs of grain and they will mill it for free. The miller breaks after the first 1/2 so now I have 13.5lbs to mill at home. It takes 1hour and 15 minutes 1 way to get to this store so I did not want to come away empty handed. Anyone have any ideas how to mill this at home. I have looked at grain mills but they are expensive and I am unsure what one to buy. Plus I need this milled by Saturday so I can brew. Thanks for the help!

Tom

pull out the rolling pin and prepare for a long night

Any other local brewers that have a grain mill?

That is the only shop with in 2 hours from me one way. It is a sad sad day!
I don't think I do well enough with the rollong pin. It looks far more cracked after going through a miller than rolling a pin over it in a plastic bag.

I like the corona mills. IMO the work well and the price can't be beat. The one below is in western Mass.


Molino Corona Corn/Grain Grinder - eBay (item 270284210746 end time Oct-13-08 17:40:07 PDT)

Heavy Duty Cast Iron Corn Grain Coffee Grinder Mill - eBay (item 220293262471 end time Nov-09-08 18:29:33 PST)

I like this one as the grinding plates are covered.
landers coffee, corn mill unique stone grinder old farm - eBay (item 120316857504 end time Oct-21-08 20:00:00 PDT)

Thread a bolt into the crank shaft and attach a beefy drill, viola a power mill. Look for a corn grinder locally and brew on!

Good luck!

You really should just wait and order a real mill. The "barley crusher" is great.

Get a mill designed for crushing barley malt. Go buy some good ale such as Sierra Nevada Pale Ale until the mill arrives.

JVD_X said:

You really should just wait and order a real mill. The "barley crusher" is great.

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I ordered it today. Should have it early next week! Thanks for the advice. I had looked at these before. I just wondered about the quality until I saw trhe lifetime warranty on the website.

Great choice on buying the Barley Crusher. It's one of the most popular malt mills on the market and for good reason. Do a quick search and you'll see thread after thread with nothing but praise for it. You won't regret it.

eddie said:

Great choice on buying the Barley Crusher. It's one of the most popular malt mills on the market and for good reason. Do a quick search and you'll see thread after thread with nothing but praise for it. You won't regret it.

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While you're at it, tell your homebrew shop to get a barley crusher too

JVD_X said:

You really should just wait and order a real mill. The "barley crusher" is great.

Click to expand...

Is my corona mill a figment of my imagination? Have you ever used one, because I get a great crush and great efficiency. Doesn't take me very long either. Oh, and it was only twenty dollars.

I used a hammer and a ziplock bag to crush a lbs of malt once. What a PITA. And that was just 1 lbs.

Go with my Patent Pending™ method (vehicle/plywood/driveway) of crushing grain.

Jamo99 said:

While you're at it, tell your homebrew shop to get a barley crusher too

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Ugh, my LHBS uses a Corona mill, the grain always looks like it was in a food processor.

My first AG I had 3 guys spend 3 hours with rolling pins crushing grain. After that I said we werent brewing again until we got a mill. We ended up getting one 3 days later. The Crankandstein has a pretty cheap model. CrankandStein 2S

JoMarky said:

Is my corona mill a figment of my imagination? Have you ever used one, because I get a great crush and great efficiency. Doesn't take me very long either. Oh, and it was only twenty dollars.

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First- chill out.

Second - I used a corona mill for years and it didn't give nearly the quality of crush that I now get.

My barley crusher is the best brew toy I ever got.

You must have taken what I said the wrong way, I was joking with you, seeing as how a corona mill is a REAL grain mill, I was trying to get you to explain what the difference is. I assumed you hadn't used a corona, my mistake. Maybe if you explained in what ways the quality improves you could convince me to get a real mill too

JVD_X said:

First- chill out.

Second - I used a corona mill for years and it didn't give nearly the quality of crush that I now get.

My barley crusher is the best brew toy I ever got.

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Used my corona mill today, as always the crush seemed perfect to me, large pieces of husk present for filtering, all grains crushed w/ none intact, interior of grain fractured into smaller pieces, some flour but not excessive, sparged real well through my braid.

What is quality of crush? Please help me here.

eager_brewer said:

OK so yesterday I go and get 14lbs of grain and they will mill it for free. The miller breaks after the first 1/2 so now I have 13.5lbs to mill at home. It takes 1hour and 15 minutes 1 way to get to this store so I did not want to come away empty handed. Anyone have any ideas how to mill this at home. I have looked at grain mills but they are expensive and I am unsure what one to buy. Plus I need this milled by Saturday so I can brew. Thanks for the help!

Tom

Click to expand...

You may find this interesting - great idea for a short-term solution.

The Northern Brewer Homebrew Forum :: View topic - poor woman's grain grinder

JoMarky said:

You must have taken what I said the wrong way, I was joking with you, seeing as how a corona mill is a REAL grain mill, I was trying to get you to explain what the difference is. I assumed you hadn't used a corona, my mistake. Maybe if you explained in what ways the quality improves you could convince me to get a real mill too

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ok - fair enough.

I do think that the barley crusher does a much better job than corona mills. I saw my efficiency go up by 15% without any noticeable tannin increase when I did. Also - the hopper is much larger (actually I wish it were even larger - I saw someone on a thread cut the bottom off a plastic carboy and inverted it into the original hopper).

I know that papazian said that he still uses a corona mill however it is IMO much more difficult to get the consistent crush with barley of various types (i.e. pils vs. chocolate malts) with a corona mill.