Well,Ive finally stabilized my wheat efficiency

I'd posted recently about how I get 81% efficiency across the board with barley based beers but keep having wildly fluctuating efficiency with wheat even though I'd tightened my mill gap to 0.030". So today I milled my barley at that setting for my Hefeweizen and I tightened the gap more for the wheat. Finally when taking the OG sample I am now dead on 81%. So for anyone else with a mill and wheat efficiency issues I suggest an even tighter mill gap. Man, the drill even worked noticeably harder and even smelled hotter.


Rev.

Rev2010 said:

I'd posted recently about how I get 81% efficiency across the board with barley based beers but keep having wildly fluctuating efficiency with wheat even though I'd tightened my mill gap to 0.030". So today I milled my barley at that setting for my Hefeweizen and I tightened the gap more for the wheat. Finally when taking the OG sample I am now dead on 81%. So for anyone else with a mill and wheat efficiency issues I suggest an even tighter mill gap. Man, the drill even worked noticeably harder and even smelled hotter.


Rev.

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Have you tried using a water soak/spray/whatever to condition the wheat prior to milling it. The kernels of wheat are pretty hard and by conditioning it they become softer and crush easier/better.

RM-MN said:

Have you tried using a water soak/spray/whatever to condition the wheat prior to milling it. The kernels of wheat are pretty hard and by conditioning it they become softer and crush easier/better.

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I haven't, conditioning is one extra step I really don't want to deal with. That and the risk of rusting my mill rollers. But, now that I've hit the same consistency as my barley based ales I'm hoping all will be well. It may be a little early to tell, but since everything went like clockwork with the tighter wheat crush I'm hoping this is the answer. Would make sense too being how much smaller wheat kernels are than barley, like half the size.


Rev.

Great!
It is always nice to read that someone made an effort to really get to know his/her system and maintain a constant efficiency.

As for malt conditioning, I do it every time and it takes only few minutes.

Glad that worked for you. It's a bit of a pain to mill wheat separately but it works.

If you're adding enough rice hulls, you can mill the wheat and the barley on the wheat setting to save some time.

I've been conditioning the grain since I started AG so I can't really compare before/after results but have been quite pleased. Efficiency varies somewhat from recipe to recipe (my lowest is 82 and my highest was 92, most barley brews are around 84), but re-brews on the same recipe have been within an efficiency point and repeatable every time. Like you, I didn't really want to add complexity to my process and was concerned with the rollers on my mill rusting but decided to give it a try. Before milling, I always assemble the grainbill in a food-safe 5 gallon bucket. About 10 minutes before milling, I tilt the bucket and give the grain 5 squirts from a spray bottle, I then tilt it the opposite direction and give it another 5 squirts then I stir everything by hand and repeat the whole process until I've given it a total of 50 squirts. This works out to about 3oz of water with that particular spray bottle. After stirring everything in I let it set for about 10 minutes and then mill it with my rollers set at .045". The crush looks great and rusting has been a non-issue, I think there just isn't enough moisture to matter. It seems to be very repeatable so far and the benefit is I don't have to adjust my rollers ever. Just an option if you're still playing with the process.