My wife is the best ! Barley Crusher

My birthday gift !
Any one use this at the default setting of.039?

happy birthday (even if belated) and that is awesome

Happy Birthday! It's my birthday today and my wife "allowed" me to spend large amounts of cash at our LHBS.

Time to fire up the kettle!

Happy birthday indeed! give it a shot at the default setting, then start tightening up the gap if you want.

Vongo said:

My wife is the best Barley Crusher

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First read this and thought you meant she was better at cranking the handle than you.

Happy Birthday!

Yeah I agree. Start at the factory .039 gap, but check it before you start. The rollers are sometimes not parallel.

I've used the default setting since I got mine. Crush seems perfect to me and I get a mash efficiency consistently in the mid 80s. So far I've decided to not mess with a good thing.

I use my barley crusher at the default setting and my efficiencies are 72%-78% range for most batches. (Batch sparge, igloo cooler mashtun) It seems to crush the grains well, I dont notice any whole grains in the mash.

Should I tighten up the gap?

I started conditioning the grain before milling, this has led me to tighten the gap to .029" currently, I get 87-89% efficency on my beers and am loving it. my last APA I eeked up to 93% by running the mill slower than I usually do.

I have also had the mill cryotreated to prolong the life of the knurling on the rollers. it has performed flawlessly so far, but time will tell how long the rollers keep their 'bite'.

I had to loosen the gap on mine slightly. The grains were being over crushed. Its really a matter of just testing it out and seeing what you're getting.

hatfieldenator said:

I had to loosen the gap on mine slightly. The grains were being over crushed. Its really a matter of just testing it out and seeing what you're getting.

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What was the issue with your overfine crush, stuck sparge or something similar?

my wife actually asks me if she can crush the grain with my barley crusher.

I tightened mine to .028 with no problems so that is where I crush.

I just bought a barley crusher two days ago. I used it for two batches over the weekend. Worked great! SWMBO is my sparge arm...

Happy birthday, dude...your wife should be commended! That was a good investment! I have mine on the default setting as well and get usually 82-86% efficiency. I tried to crush finer but efficiency suffered....not by much, though. I moved it back and am happy with the results so I don't feel like monkeying with it.