Grain Milling Question

I'm using a 3 roller Monster Mill, I received for Christmas. Does it hurt to crush the grain with a 2nd pass thru the Mill. I have no problem with stuck sparges.

will a send pass screw up my efficiency ??

Just trying to make sure all the grain is cracked.

Nope, a lot of people do a second runnings to get better efficiency out of their mashes. As long as you do not get stuck sparges, tighten your rollars and run it through twice for good measure. I need to do both with my BC right now. I just need to dig out my old feeler gauges before I mess with my spacing.

excellent, that is what I have been doing and my efficiency went way up over the crush I was getting from my LHBS.

I am having issues with the adjustment on this 3 roller. In order to do it with a feeler guage, you have to unbolt the hopper,

And I burned up my electric drill today stepdrilling stainless. I'm tring to mill with my air drill but it seems to spin too fast.

That's kinda the reason to get a 3 roller- so you don't have to double mill. That's what's happening with a 3 roller. The first roller is like .70 and the adjustable roller is .39 or whatever you set it. That crushes the husks first loosely so they stay together and the second crushes the rest finer leaving the husks mostly undamaged.

Yes. Having to unbolt the hopper to get a feeler gauge in there is annoying. You just have to do it once and mark the adjustment screw with several sharpie markings to denote the spacings. I'm working on this too and put her at .40 and left it there. My efficiency is great.

Using this thing with a 3/8" drill was a nightmare. I was burning mine up by the end of a 30 lb grain bill. Now I've got mine mounted and motorized and it's heaven.

the first time I used it I set it to .040 (or so i thought), put the hopper back on and it would not feed the grain. so I just tweaked the adjustment knobs until it started to feed, and worked great. I never got it to mill last night, not sure if its because my air drill spins to fast for it to catch the grain, but i need to go over and buy another electric drill. I also changed the adjustment knobs, so I'm sure I screwed up the adjustment

I'm sure its user error, this is a nice product

hefeluver said:

the first time I used it I set it to .040 (or so i thought), put the hopper back on and it would not feed the grain. so I just tweaked the adjustment knobs until it started to feed, and worked great. I never got it to mill last night, not sure if its because my air drill spins to fast for it to catch the grain, but i need to go over and buy another electric drill. I also changed the adjustment knobs, so I'm sure I screwed up the adjustment
I'm sure its user error, this is a nice product

Click to expand...

All of what you are describing has to do with driving your mill with the drill. I had all of the same problems and some brew days were almost cancelled until I 'played' the mill until would grind grain. You sound just like me... I thought I had a bad mill at first.

I think, It has to do with the variability of torque vs. RPM you're getting when you use a drill, especially a 3/8". It's too high RPM until you get some grain in there and then it's too low torque to crush, so you have to start the crush and 'play' the mill until you hit the right conditions to continue the feed....

Now, I just flip the switch with the same mill and settings and it works every time (at 100 in-lb of torque.... yeee haw).

SankePankey said:

All of what you are describing has to do with driving your mill with the drill. I had all of the same problems and some brew days were almost cancelled until I 'played' the mill until would grind grain. You sound just like me... I thought I had a bad mill at first.

I think, It has to do with the variability of torque vs. RPM you're getting when you use a drill, especially a 3/8". It's too high RPM until you get some grain in there and then it's too low torque to crush, so you have to start the crush and 'play' the mill until you hit the right conditions to continue the feed....

Now, I just flip the switch with the same mill and settings and it works every time (at 100 in-lb of torque.... yeee haw).

Click to expand...

I plan to convert mine over with an electric motor. its on the project list. for now its over to Harbor Freight Tools, they have a 1/2' low speed drill on sale for $39

I do not own a grain crusher, but if I did, I would sieve after the first pass and only secondary crush what was caught in the sieve.

I get a really nice crush with a single pass through my Monster Mill MM-3, can't see why you would want to run it through twice. Maybe you have the gap too wide.

If you take your feeler gauge apart and just use the one leaf/gauge, you can turn it side ways and check your gap from the bottom of the mill. Insert it sort of side ways on one side and then the other. That way you don't have to rely on marks made on the adjustment knobs to get things back when you put the hopper back on.

after a couple of hours tinkering around I have it all figured out. Bottom-Line, the best way to do this is add a permenant motor to drive this.

Set the rollers correctly, and bought a 1/2" low speed, high torque drill. that did the trick, but I want something more permenant . That will be my next project.