grain mills

I was wondering if there is a grain mill with adjustable plates. My wife wants a mill to make flour with for Christmas, and me being the Beer Minded Brewer that I am, thought that maybe we could get one that could adjust for crushing barley, but make it so that you can mill flour as well- Anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks

I know a Corona mill is actually designed to mill flour, but many brewers use it to crush grain. I never tried one (and in fact gave mine away without even using it) but some swear it gives a decent crush to malted barley.

I don't know how some other grain mills designed for flour would work. I think it'd be hard to do because with malt, you want to crush the grain, but not shred it or pulverize it. With flour, you want to pulverize the grain. I'd be interested to hear what others say. I'm sure that there are some of us that have tried it.

I have a Country Living Grain Mill. It does an extraordinary job of milling wheat and other grains for flour, but it will not crush grain. It can make coarse flour or fine flour, but for crushing you really need a roller mill, not a flour mill.

If your wife wants a flour mill and you want to get her the absolute best, I recommend the Country Living Grain Mill. It is pretty expensive, over $400 if you buy it from the manufacturer's site I linked, but you can save a few dollars if you google. You will have to mount it to a sturdy surface to use it. I mounted mine to a steel-reinforced cutting board, then I clamp the cutting board to my pastry table to use it. That kept me from having to mount it permanently to my pastry table.

The Country Living Grain Mill is a hand-cranked manual mill. There is a motor kit available for it. It is huge, heavy, and will require a dedicated permanent installation if you go that route. I bet it would drive a roller mill for crushing grains quite nicely too.

Pleasant Hill Grains is a good source to research top quality flour mills.


Once you've outfitted the wife with a good quality flour mill, you can go out and buy yourself a proper roller mill for crushing grain.

I made some malt flour recently for my wife to use for an experiment in her teaching lab. I ran it through my 3 roller mill with the gap as tight as I could go without making it bog down. In this case I wanted to remove the husks. I preconditioned the malt with a little water which really helps to keep the husks in large pieces. After milling I shook the grains so the husks would rise to the top. After about 10 min of shaking and removing the husks as they rose I got some pretty clean endosperm. Then it went in batches into a coffee grinder. I could have used a food processor, but I didn't have time at home and the was a grinder in the lab.

If you want whole wheat etc. you wouldn't need to remove the husks. Raw wheat is pretty tough stuff - even for a std. barley mill. I wouldn't advise tossing that as is into a food processor. However, after a pass of two over a barley mill (smaller gap the second time) it might not be so bad for a food processor once the initial crush is done.

ps. at least 3 tuba players on board here

As the recipient of Yoops COrona Mill, my answer is yes. If you are using the washer method to make a larger gap for grain milling like many of us are, then all you need to do to revert back to flour milling would be to remove the washers, and re-tighten the gap..

Info here on the carona, with pics of the washers https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/my-ugly-junk-corona-mill-station-90849/

+1 to the corona mill, I've used mine to make whole wheat and whole grain flour and it works very well for that (which is of course what it was designed for ).

I've used malted maris otter as additional flour in muffins along with whole wheat flour and they're REALLY tasty.

Revvy said:

As the recipient of Yoops COrona Mill, my answer is yes. If you are using the washer method to make a larger gap for grain milling like many of us are, then all you need to do to revert back to flour milling would be to remove the washers, and re-tighten the gap..

Info here on the carona, with pics of the washers https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/my-ugly-junk-corona-mill-station-90849/

Click to expand...

Can you elaborate on the "Washer Method"??? Thanks!

ThirstyHobbit said:

Can you elaborate on the "Washer Method"??? Thanks!

Click to expand...

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You use some washers to widen the gap in the plate to crush grain, rather than turn it to flour. See where the ^^ is? Add 2 or 3 on each side, until you get the crush you like for grain, remove them to make flour.