BroomVikin
Well-Known Member
I'll start by saying that a very generous HBTer gifted me a Corona mill a few years ago. I let it sit around for quite a while and then just recently decided to give it a try. I cranked the gap down to almost closed, crushed my first batch of grain, and have been getting great efficiency ever since. Think 77%-84%! The catch is this, during recirculation I have serious issues with the wort draining through the grain fast enough to keeping up with the outflow of the kettle. I'm constantly having to stir the mash so I don't run the level below the mash dry. When I say constantly I mean about 15-20 seconds of stirring every 2 minutes or so. As you might guess this gets VERY tiresome over the course of an hour. I have a mini ball valve on the outflow of the pump and it is throttled back almost to closed. So much so that my temp. probe actually reads about 1-1.5 degrees low due to the drastically reduced flow rate. If I open the valve all the way and stir like crazy the probe usually goes up at least a degree. Honestly it's getting really old and I'd like to fix the issue. What I'm wondering is if I'm actually crushing too fine and that the grain is acting more like mud than just a "filter". I've never gotten any off flavors from the crush being too fine (I've read about actually grinding the husks too much being a negative) but I'm starting to wonder if that might be some of my recirculation issues. Thoughts? Ideas?