How crushed should cara/crystal malts be?

For my last two batches I've crushed them with a rolling pin. Two turns over with pretty much weight on the roller. Color and sugar definately have been extracted during steeping, but maybe I should be getting more? Should it look like this picture?

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_zAutCdX5Ezo/ScNCxBXjG7I/AAAAAAAABRE/F27iokBiu6Y/s400/malt.jpg

Edit: That picture is of regular malt, not cara/crystal.

You might not be getting as good of a crush with the rolling pin. Has your OG been lower then what you wanted? If so this could be why. If not then the rolling pin is working fine. As a side thought can you get your grains crushed from where you buy them?

There should be no difference in the milling of the crystal and the base malts.

I'm new to all of this and did my 1 st batch last night and I have 2 questions?? One is I made a mistake at the end of cooling and applying the yeast I dropped my seal for my valve.... Pushed right through into the wort and I washed my hands twice and well had to fish for it! Will this infect my batch?? Second question is.... What is the math of doing the hydrometer o get alcohol %?? It started at 1.042 when the wort was cooled at 80 and it says the finished product should be around 1.011 to 1.013. How do you figure out what percent the alcohol would be?

badhabit said:

There should be no difference in the milling of the crystal and the base malts.

Click to expand...

+1

mroyer747 said:

I'm new to all of this and did my 1 st batch last night and I have 2 questions?? One is I made a mistake at the end of cooling and applying the yeast I dropped my seal for my valve.... Pushed right through into the wort and I washed my hands twice and well had to fish for it! Will this infect my batch?? Second question is.... What is the math of doing the hydrometer o get alcohol %?? It started at 1.042 when the wort was cooled at 80 and it says the finished product should be around 1.011 to 1.013. How do you figure out what percent the alcohol would be?

Click to expand...

you can get a more correct starting gravity with some calclulators. usually the default temp is set for 60 degrees. If the temp is different then your hydrometer will read incorrectly. Beersmith tells me that 1.042 at 80 should be 1.044 at 60 degrees. There are a surplus of gravity based ABV calculators online. Take a final hydrometer reading when the air lock has ceased bubbling for a couple days.
http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/
http://www.brewersfriend.com/abv-calculator/

In response to the whole dunking your entire arm in to fish out the seal, you probably shouldn't have done that. That being said, there's a whole thread where people did things they shouldn't have done and their beers turned out fine.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/wh...rned-out-great-96780/index50.html#post3740016
just relax, your beer should be fine. Just leave it alone and don't let it get too warm.

mroyer747 said:

I'm new to all of this and did my 1 st batch last night and I have 2 questions?? One is I made a mistake at the end of cooling and applying the yeast I dropped my seal for my valve.... Pushed right through into the wort and I washed my hands twice and well had to fish for it! Will this infect my batch?? Second question is.... What is the math of doing the hydrometer o get alcohol %?? It started at 1.042 when the wort was cooled at 80 and it says the finished product should be around 1.011 to 1.013. How do you figure out what percent the alcohol would be?

Click to expand...

You can also calculate ABV by hand: (OG -FG) x 131
so 1.042-1.012 = .03 x 131 = 3.93% ABV.

In the future just start your own thread. This has nothing to do with the OP's question.

Thanks all this is a great app... I didn't know how the thread thing works!!! Now I found out thanks all!