Efficiency from MoreBeer milled grain

Hey everyone I had a brew day today and I got my grains crushed from MoreBeer.com. I had such a smooth brew day but my efficiency was low, only 68%, where I based my recipe on efficiency of 75%. I am trying to figure out why I missed and I am wondering about the crush, does anyone ever get their grain milled by MoreBeer, and how has your efficiency been?

That was right about where my efficiency was with grain crushed from morebeer. Once I got my own mill, I was just under 80%.

Bringing back a zombie thread here, but I've been having the same issue with morebeer milled grains. If I buy/mill at the LHBS I get 80%. Order milled from MB and it is under 70%.

Time to get a mill....

I just got an order from morebeer and thought that they had forgot to mill the grains. This crush looks absolutely pathetic. I usually never purchase homebrewing ingredients online but had a gift certificate I won from a competition

The only grains I've ever ordered from Morebeer were barely crushed at all....pisses me off, too, because they charge you extra. That's why I crush all my grains at home now.

Hmm, I might have had the same trouble with the Zythos IPA kit I got from them recently. Although I was also mashing 14 pounds of grain in a 5.5 gallon cooler at about 1.1 quarts per pound, which seems to have given me about 64% efficiency.

I guess it's one way for them to sell more mills...

But you didn't get a stuck sparge, did you?

I don't understand why they don't just adjust their mill better. The kit I got is Jamil's chocolate hazelnut porter.. by my calculations I should get a 1.078 og from the ingredients, but the ingredient sheet says the "estimated morebeer! range" is 1.059-1.063. It's almost like they do this crap on purpose or something

i hit 71.5% on my 1st all-grain batch with MB grains a couple weeks ago and about 67% on a partial mash in July.

Personally, I'm ok with those results.

I bought milled grains from Morebeer once. After I received them, I promptly went to LHBS and bought a barley crusher. I then ran the Morebeer "milled" grains through the mill. I hit 81%.

Their crush is terrible; however it doesn't hurt to add an extra pound or two to compensate if you can't drop the $100-plus for a mill.

But seriously. The crush is terrible.

Hey All,

Very sorry for the issues with the mill settings of our grain. We mill it to approximately 70% when used on one of our BrewSculptures. The purposes for the light milling are to prevent stuck mashes, and to reduce tannin extraction while mashing / sparging. We understand that it's not always ideal to have to buy extra grain to makeup for efficiency loss, but believe that by cracking the grains open rather than pulverizing them, you're receiving a higher quality product.

This all being said, we also appreciate honest feedback and believe our customers are always right. If the majority of our customers would prefer our grains to be milled finer, then we'll certainly discuss this in our product and brand meetings to determine if we should alter the settings.

On this same note, all of our ingredient kits are calculated for 5.5 gallons at 70% efficiency as well. Hopefully this helps, and very sorry again for the inconveniences you've experienced! Please let me know if you have any questions or further concerns and I will try to help however possible.

Sincerely,
Matt

Jipper said:

Hey All,

Very sorry for the issues with the mill settings of our grain. We mill it to approximately 70% when used on one of our BrewSculptures. The purposes for the light milling are to prevent stuck mashes, and to reduce tannin extraction while mashing / sparging. We understand that it's not always ideal to have to buy extra grain to makeup for efficiency loss, but believe that by cracking the grains open rather than pulverizing them, you're receiving a higher quality product.

This all being said, we also appreciate honest feedback and believe our customers are always right. If the majority of our customers would prefer our grains to be milled finer, then we'll certainly discuss this in our product and brand meetings to determine if we should alter the settings.

On this same note, all of our ingredient kits are calculated for 5.5 gallons at 70% efficiency as well. Hopefully this helps, and very sorry again for the inconveniences you've experienced! Please let me know if you have any questions or further concerns and I will try to help however possible.

Sincerely,
Matt

Click to expand...

Holy crap! Hey, thanks for being an active business person! This is why I like MoreBeer! As a matter of fact, I have a shipment due to get delivered tomorrow.

I know it might seem odd, but I definitely noticed a better crush in the 1lb bags vs. the 5 lb bag. I took into consideration weight, settling during sitting and transport and all that, but it just didn't compare in a side-by-side. I even shook up the bags to make sure it was distributed; it was still very noticeable.

That's interesting. All of our grain sizes go through the same mill / hopper (we use a giant mill, and they go into a 3BBL hopper). I could see where maybe if our production team runs the smaller sizes first though, that the milled particles make their way down through the hopper first and into those 1lb. bags. I'll be asking my production manager what order they run the different sizes in, and if that is the case, I'll work with them to see how we can make it more evenly distributed. If anything, I would think we'd want our 10lb and 5lb sizes to be a "finer" crush than our 1lb size.

I can agree that it's not as fine as a lot of people prefer. One of our local customers, Mike "Tasty" McDole was actually the one who helped us determine that setting. He's brewed a batch or two, and swears by buying an extra pound or two of slightly milled grain rather than pulverizing it into what he calls "flour powder" and dealing with a slow / stuck mash or tannins.

Still would like to hear feedback though! We're always wanting to improve, and if changing our mill settings allows us to take a step in the right direction, then give me a screwdriver...

Cheers!

This is only my personal opinion but when I decided to brew all grain I bought a grain mill. All grain means to me to be in control of the outcome of my beers based on my desire. Efficiency is a huge part of the outcome. Why would I trust someone else to do it for me.(money would be the obvious reason) I had stuck sparges and low efficiency with my own mill. It took me time to figure out what works for my system. I don't wish to ruffle any feathers but if I was the company I would choose the middle road also.

Jipper said:

Hey All,

Very sorry for the issues with the mill settings of our grain. We mill it to approximately 70% when used on one of our BrewSculptures. The purposes for the light milling are to prevent stuck mashes, and to reduce tannin extraction while mashing / sparging. We understand that it's not always ideal to have to buy extra grain to makeup for efficiency loss, but believe that by cracking the grains open rather than pulverizing them, you're receiving a higher quality product.

This all being said, we also appreciate honest feedback and believe our customers are always right. If the majority of our customers would prefer our grains to be milled finer, then we'll certainly discuss this in our product and brand meetings to determine if we should alter the settings.

On this same note, all of our ingredient kits are calculated for 5.5 gallons at 70% efficiency as well. Hopefully this helps, and very sorry again for the inconveniences you've experienced! Please let me know if you have any questions or further concerns and I will try to help however possible.

Sincerely,
Matt

Click to expand...

Thanks for replying to the thread Matt.

I noticed that all of the specialty grains included in the kit had a crush that was perfect, the Maris otter base was the issue. Many of the kernels didnt even appear to be cracked at all. When I mashed in, they were all just floating on top of the water. The gravity reading after the sparge indicated I was off by more than 1.025 of what it should.

CrystalShip said:

Thanks for replying to the thread Matt.

I noticed that all of the specialty grains included in the kit had a crush that was perfect, the Maris otter base was the issue. Many of the kernels didnt even appear to be cracked at all. When I mashed in, they were all just floating on top of the water. The gravity reading after the sparge indicated I was off by more than 1.025 of what it should.

Click to expand...

I just recieved a shipment this afternoon and I have a pound of chocolate milled (everything else is unmilled, but if I wanted the chocolate unmilled, I would have had to wait for it to ship from cali. Weird.) Anyway, the crush on the chocolate is very good. If all the Vienna I ordered last time had come milled like this, I wouldn't have had to go buy a mill and would just order grains milled. Maybe you're on to something.

I have learned while working at a HBS that getting brewers to agree on an ideal crush is near impossible. Some like cracked, some like crushed, and like the weather it could always be better.

More beer milled grain i get horrid efficiantcy 2 times in a row. My LHBS does it better. Half my 2 row wasnt even cracked. I added an extra lb of 2 row for my pliny clone from them and still had to add 4 cups dme to hit target og. I will no longer be buying premilled grain from them.lhbs or buying a mill.

It's impossible to please everyone in regards to milling grain. I bought my grain from my LHBS and I wasn't happy with it. So I asked them to run it through the mill again and it turned to flour. Now I have the my LHBS mill it once, then I finish it to my liking with a mini Ninja blender. It takes less than ten minutes to grind 14 lbs and I get the exact mill I desire. It would be nice, however, if a brew store would be "biab friendly" and have a finer milled grain available as an option.

I just used morebeer grain for the first time, and was just shy of 70%. Unfortunately, I'm usually up around 90%, so this sort of hurt the recipe. I adjusted the hop bill, so its fine. I'd rather have an accidentally lighter beer than use extract. Mostly because I'm cheap and extract is expensive.

I don't mind the 70% efficiency. For certain beers I'll no-sparge just to keep my efficiency low (also save time). It is just super important to know what your efficiency will be when crafting the recipe. When you order from different stores that crush on different mills, it is really challenging to be regular. When I mill myself at my LHBS (adventures in homebrew) and fly sparge, I am usually 88-90 for a normal gravity beer.

I think morebeer could make that more clear on their grains page. Their grain is milled to achieve 70% extraction efficiency in a false-bottom MLT with batch sparging. They could even put in a table on how to adjust your estimated efficiency. Things like braided lines instead of false-bottoms will lower the efficiency X-amount. Or batch sparging will lower the efficiency X-amount. As long as they add a disclaimer about these numbers being rough estimates, I think they could help people plan their brews better.