How's my crush?

Picked up a Cereal Killer mill. Went back and forth about it but ended up getting it. Perfect credit card gap however both sides are reading different numbers. Looks a little too fine to me. View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1441111970.581424.jpg

How did it turn out? Did you get a stuck sparge with it?

It does look a bit fine and maybe slightly more flour than what you'd want but doesn't look too bad.

One thing I started doing is malt conditioning and I swear by it now.

Before milling it, take your grain bill, turn it into ounces, calculate 2% and use that much water in ounces in a spray bottle and spray the grains while churning them with your hands to cover them all, let the grains sit for 30 minutes and then mill away. Less flour and I've yet to have a stuck sparge and no need for rice hulls.

Looks good to me. What is your mashing/sparging method?

If BIAB you can mill even finer than this.

I mash in a cooler with a CPVC manifold and batch sparge. I mill barley at 0.030" now, and love it. Wheat, Rye and other small kernel grain and flaked goods at 0.024".

I actually recirculate my mash and did get two times when it slowed quite a bit. Had to break it up and start again.

gotbags-10 said:

I actually recirculate my mash and did get two times when it slowed quite a bit. Had to break it up and start again.

Click to expand...

That maybe an indication of too fine a crush, or draining too fast, compacting your grain bed. If there is a larger % of wheat, oats, or rye in the mash, they are notorious for gumming it up, mix in a handful of rice hulls. It's the best lautering aid.

You can mill coarser than a "credit card," but efficiency may start to suffer. It's about finding the best balance for your system.

And again, small kernel grains do need to get milled on a narrower gap than barley or most will pass through uncrushed. Try it with a pound of rye or wheat. Remember, milling twice too coarse does not make up for milling once correctly.

You know it did have 12% oats in it. I may just try a handful of rice hulls and see if that helps if not then adjust my gap. I did hit 76% efficiency right out of the gate so I was pretty happy with that

I get 82-86% with batch sparging and my relatively fine crush. Never have a stuck mash, even with 10-15% wheat/oats in it and without rice hulls. Now the difference on homebrew scale between 76% and 80% is very small, about 5% of the grain bill, half a pound to a pound in a 5 gallon batch.

I agree with plumbrew. Wet milling is awesome. I just spray the grain with a spray bottle until it all seems wet. Wait twenty and mill. Al comes out dry with minimal flour. If I don't do this I end up with all flour. I set my mill with a very small gap

I'd dial it back a notch, if you can...looks a bit floury.

I was using too tight of a crush when I moved to recirculating mash, and got stuck frequently. If you recirculate, you really don't need to crush very fine.

FWIW, I have my Cereal Killer set to .042

Here's Kal's take on a crush using a HERMS system:

Some brewers may find our 0.045" gap size to be fairly "loose" and prefer to go tighter (smaller gap). As mentioned earlier, with a recirculating system such as ours a coarser crush is recommended. A fine crush is not required and may actually be detrimental to the sugar extraction process as it impedes fluid flow. Our Electric Brewery achieves high efficiency even with this 0.045" gap setting. We feel this helps avoid issues such as stuck sparges which can be problematic with some beer styles.


http://www.theelectricbrewery.com/grain-mill?page=3

I recirc. I switched from 0.030-0.032" to 0.028" as one step of about 5 to try to get better brewhouse efficiency (we were generally in the low 60s, and that persisted on our first batch on the RIMS system) and we've been in 78-80% consistently since.


Can't attribute it to the crush alone, but most of the steps were minor grasping-at-straws-type efforts (large, sturdy aluminum mash paddle vs. skinnier long spoon being the other one I could see contributing the most....also switched from 60 min mashes to 75, drain batch sparge runnings more slowly, and switched to tap water + campden as opposed to brita-filtered water).


Did run into stuck drains on a few batches (some made sense in terms of wheat / rye / thick step mash, some didn't) despite using rice hulls and conditioning grain as above, leaving behind a good deal of fluffy husk material for lautering. Added a BIAB bag along with a false bottom and even with no rice hulls anymore, no issues since on any batches, wheat-heavy or otherwise.


Feel free to use this anecdotal information however you wish!