Cracking grains - first all grain

I'm posting this in the beginner forum because this will be my first all grain.

I'm making Bee Cave Brewery Haus Pale Ale (link) and I'm going to do the BIAB method.

I don't have a grain mill, and I bought the grains whole. The LHBS is not close to where I'll be brewing. I have an old hand crank mill with the 2 wheels. There are 2 dies with it. One with large slots, and one with smaller slots. The one with larger slots lets a lot of grain through that is not even cracked. The smaller one seems to crush it too much from photos I've seen of 'perfectly cracked grain.'

Should I go out of my way and back to the LHBS to get the grains properly milled, or since I'm doing the BIAB method just mill them with my hand mill and not worry about it? No need to worry about stuck mash, as the bag will take care of that.

Thanks for helping to solve my dilemma.

Sam

Well you need to worry about a good crush. Doing BIAB still requires a good crush to get proper extraction and full conversion.

If it helps, I run my grainbills though my Barley Crusher twice. I'm not sure that you can get a crush too fine. You would probably be fine running it through your mill, but if you're not comfortable with that they you may want to think about going back to the LHBS.

FWIW, here's what my crush typically looks like:

if you are worried about too fine of a crush, why not try running your grain multiple times through the larger mill setting? And maybe hook your drill up to it so you don't kill your arm...

Thanks for the great picture. It really helps. I think that is actually pretty close to what I'm getting with the corona type mill.

I've decided to relax and just go with the flow, and use my hand cranker corona.

Thanks again, Sam