my barley crusher

so i've brewed about 15 batches so far. after getting efficiencies in the 60s for my past batches, i finally decided to wise up and get a barley crusher.

all i can say is wow. my efficiency shot up to 75% with this last batch, and i didn't do too fine of a crush. after comparing pictures of how my grains were crushed by my LHBS to the crush using my own malt mill, it is clear as day how many lbs of grain my LHBS was cheating me out of.

i also feel more in touch with my beer knowing that i crushed every grain. maybe one day i can harvest and malt my own grain.

i'm going to be tightening up my crushing gap for next batch and hopefully i can get into those legendary 80s i've heard so much about.

i'm convinced that a proper malt mill should be one of the first items on the "to get" list for every new brewer.


1) 8+ lbs kettle
2) kegging system
3) malt mill

If you do not do it already try wet milling. I use about 3-4 oz of water and spray a little mix and repeat until water is gone and you will not believe the crush you get along with in tact hulls for better grain bed.

I also have a barley crusher and conditioned my grain with water last batch, worked great only problem is I now have gummed up rollers on my mill and need to wire brush them. My efficiency was only 67% but that's because I'm doing partial boils so I couldn't sparge with much water.