Grain mill question

Is there any advantage of running the grains through the mill more than once? Would doing this make it any easier, or improve efficiency of extraction? Thanks in advance
Tim............

If a single pass does not yield the expected or desired crush, a second run can help. Basicly you want / need a nice thorough crush w/ as little husk damage as possible to aid in lautering. I would certainly advise running through the mill twice over brewing w/ undercrushed malt.

I have heard numerous times that its not needed, unless you are doing wheat without an adjustment, then I have been told to run the wheat through onces, then run it through with all the rest of the grain. Keep track of the "gap" distance (.034, etc..) You can make adjustments. Run the grain, is the grain crushed? Is the shell still in one piece. I look for the inner grain to be crushed, but I have noticed when my gap is too narrow, the hull will be split into many pieces, making a BAD fillter bed. I like the meat of the grain crushed, some flour and an intact hull. I have my barley crusher at .034, and works great. I did a batch at .030 - .029 and I had a tougher time sparging.

Lots of people run it through more than once. I never have because my gap is fine where it is, but of the gap is a bit wide, say at the LHBS, then run it through again and hopefully it will improve the crush. If it's YOUR crusher, then adjust the gap and be done.

Ok, this is my friend's mill. I am new to the addiction, I have built a manifold for the propane and am building a hopper for the mill now. I have been doing all of the milling, I noticed that most of the grains are crushed, I had seen some whole pass through, though. I will have to check the adjustment. We have brewed 3 batches in the last 2 months. First was s Saison, that was amazing. Next was a wheat that we split and made 5 gal. of bluberry and 5 gal. regular. Last friday we did a Belgian Dubble, Can't wait to taste this!

A good crush will produce the best efficiency and not plug up the manifold. If you are happy with the efficiency, and the beer is good, then no worries. But I'd probably bump it tighter just a hair. If you are getting whole kernels going through, then there is room to go finer.

make the gap wider than a credit card but smaller than a CD

Beyond the husk you have the pericarp/testa and aleurone layer. Like the husk this part of the grain is also a source of polyphenols. Excessive crushing will break this down and increase the solubility in the mash in turn increasing the polyphenol content of your wort. Don't over crush, keep your gap large enough as a bunch of shredded hulls and flour will give you good efficiency, just a ton of polyphenols.

When I was getting my Corona-type mill dialed in, I did this once to part of the grain bill. My impression was that it got rid of the uncrushed kernels, but at the expense of more flour. Now that I've got the thing properly adjusted, one pass through does the trick, and I hit my Brix numbers for a given beer, which is all I care about....not interested in getting 140% efficiency, or whatever.

Desert_Sky said:

make the gap wider than a credit card but smaller than a CD

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Thanks for the responses. I like this method!

Busco said:

Thanks for the responses. I like this method!

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and thats with width of the raised numbers on the credit card, not just the card itself.