How bad of a crush is this?

[dsaavedra]

I just received this grain in the mail from a very popular online retailer. I ordered it milled but it appears that at least 50% of the grains are completely intact. I think this is a pretty terrible crush but I'm still pretty new to all grain so I don't have a lot to go on. Either way, I plan on contacting the retailer when they are open tomorrow to discuss this with them... I am not happy about it.

So, just how bad is this?

1/2 cup just for scale:

1 tablespoon:

Same tablespoon, sorted:

 

[Qhrumphf]

Yeah, that looks a little too coarse to me.

 

[Gavin C]

That is the worst crush I have seen. Almost uncrushed.

This is also the best post I have ever seen where some one clearly shows the problem crush. Really nice job on the photos. Leaves the problem in no doubt whatsoever.

This is what my grains look like when they are crushed.

Fine crush for BIAB so you probably would want coarser if you are using a false bottom/manifold/braided hose etc.

 

[pcollins]

Definitely contact them. In a tablespoon sample size I would expect to see a few whole grains, definitely not that many.

 

[dsaavedra]

Thank you all for the quick replies.

I put together two grain bills in my order from this retailer, each came in a large vacuum sealed bag. Since I have had plans to brew tomorrow for over a week now (I have to travel to my parents' house on the weekends to brew, I just got here tonight and got a chance to inspect the grains) I decided to open the bag of grains I intend to use tomorrow and I have spent all evening crushing them by hand with a beer bottle and a Ziploc bag. I'm still not done and I am going to have a whole lot of fun cleaning up the dust it created in my parents' kitchen.

I plan on leaving the other grain bag sealed and sending it back to this retailer, either for a refund or a properly crushed replacement.

 

[Qhrumphf]

I wouldn't call it the worst crush I've seen, but it's certainly bad, and certainly enough to warrant complaining to the retailer. They may just send you another bag for free and let you keep the stuff you already have, who knows.

Honestly, I don't think there's any excuse for any homebrewer (especially an all-grain homebrewer) not to have their own mill. Buy yourself a corona mill. Not ideal, but better than crushing with a bottle.

 

[dsaavedra]

Honestly, I don't think there's any excuse for any homebrewer (especially an all-grain homebrewer) not to have their own mill. Buy yourself a corona mill. Not ideal, but better than crushing with a bottle.

I'm working on it... I've been slowly working my way up to full-fledged all grain system. I tried BIAB a few times and wasn't happy with it so I put together a cooler MLT for batch sparging and bought a Johnson temperature controller for fermentation while I was at it. I have used them once (tomorrow will be my second time) with great results, best beer I have ever produced. Next on my list is getting an RO filter (my water has very high alkalinity, I've been buying distilled water and adding salts but I'd like to get my own RO system). Then I'd like to get my own mill so I can begin buying grain in bulk and get into the all grain game full swing.

My experience tonight may have bumped grain mill to top priority...

 

[TX_Brewing]

Buy a couple of 5 gallon plastic jugs, they are about $6 each here in Houston and buy RO water from the grocery store. Use money saved not buying an RO system, or even distilled water and buy a mill. BTW, that crush is pretty poor, excellent photos though.

 

[dsaavedra]

Buy a couple of 5 gallon plastic jugs, they are about $6 each here in Houston and buy RO water from the grocery store. Use money saved not buying an RO system, or even distilled water and buy a mill. BTW, that crush is pretty poor, excellent photos though.

I did this today, for the first time - I brought my two Better Bottles into the Walmart I found that sells RO water for 37 cents a gallon (the only store in my area that sells RO water by the gallon). Let's just say it was a mess.... I already have an aversion to Walmart and the cashier didn't know how to ring up water from the dispenser so she had to call over a manager and then she ended up charging me for 8 gallon jugs of drinking water (74 cents a piece v.s. the 37 cents a gallon RO water is supposed to cost). I just wanted to get the hell out of there so I didn't make a big deal of it. There is an RO system on Amazon with great reviews for $55 so that is going to be my next purchase without question. I simply can not deal with going through that ordeal again.

 

[daggers_nz]

I did this today, for the first time - I brought my two Better Bottles into the Walmart I found that sells RO water for 37 cents a gallon (the only store in my area that sells RO water by the gallon).

I wish this was an option for me. I can't stand the idea of buying 3x10L bottles for every brew just to throw away the bottle

 

[dsaavedra]

I've finally finished crushing all the grains with a beer bottle. I'd say it is still a pretty poor crush, there are still a lot of whole grains. But there is also a lot of flour. So I'm anticipating very low efficiency and probably a stuck sparge tomorrow... can't wait. It's even worse because this is already a light grain bill (Centennial blonde) so a big hit in efficiency will really put a dent in the ABV of the final product and probably throw it all out of whack.

 

[Singletrack]

This is what my grains look like when they are crushed.

Fine crush for BIAB so you probably would want coarser if you are using a false bottom/manifold/braided hose etc.

View attachment 297884View attachment 297887

I'm having a hard time seeing the crush in these photos. Would you mind sorting a pound or two into 5 or 6 categories by sieve size?

 

[MandingaBIAB]

with my BIAB setup I use a course grain regimen because it helps the wort to be viable but not so viable that final gravity ends up being too low for the best taste. Enzyme concentration is very rich in the confines of the grain bag and can cause FG to be much too low.

 

[AQUILAS]

I actually just got in my order in on Wednesday from an online homebrew store and that's exactly how my grain bill looks like. I think we may have ordered from the same place.

In my order, before I clicked the submit order button, I typed out in the notes section to have the grains double crushed. When I got the emailed receipt, it shows my note.

I questioned how my grains looked when I received them, but this confirms it.

 

[Komodo]

I wouldn't even start mashing with that. My mill is set to .034, and the crush looks just like Gavins. I get 80-85% doing batch sparges.

 

[douglasbarbin]

Horrible crush. Mine is pretty similar to Gavin's, and I use a false bottom.

 

[kh54s10]

That is the worst crush I have seen. Almost uncrushed.

This is also the best post I have ever seen where some one clearly shows the problem crush. Really nice job on the photos. Leaves the problem in no doubt whatsoever.

This is what my grains look like when they are crushed.

Fine crush for BIAB so you probably would want coarser if you are using a false bottom/manifold/braided hose etc.

View attachment 297884View attachment 297887

I agree. That is the worst crush I have seen pictured on HBT. From what you describe after more crushing with the bottle I would do some more crushing. I don't know about your system, but for me it takes a ton of flour to stick mine up. I have had is slow but never stuck.

Gavin, haven't I seen that second photo before? I seem to remember a discussion about what is at the top of the picture. Thermometer probe, IIRC.

 

[sudbuddy]

That is an awful crush. Definitely contact them. Also, I think you should bump the grain mill up to the top of your priority list. It will make everything cheaper and your beer will be better. If you have a local homebrew shop, I highly encourage you to check out their bulk grain pricing, it is probably pretty competitive with the big online guys and you won't have to pay shipping. Best case scenario is you ask them to notify you when they're buying a pallet and you can get your order on it super cheap. Or check with your local homebrew club, sometimes they are able to do bulk buys on grain, which would also be cheaper for you. You don't want to store milled grain for a long time. Like coffee, it will lose its flavor and freshness quickly

 

[brew703]

I've been buying grains from two LHBS. I tell them I want the grains crushed two times and I get the impression they don't want to do that. Each time I still get what looks like whole grains vs crushed so I guess they are not crushing the grains fine enough.

It's frustration for me because I brew BIAB and I have to driver 1+ hrs to get to the store. I am about to order a grain mill, not sure which one yet just to not have to deal with the LHBS. the guys are super nice but it's like you are asking them for something free when trying to get the grain crushed to my liking.

Matter of fact, will be picking up an order tomorrow. May ask then to double crush finer and see what happens.

 

[kh54s10]

Reading these tales and the want to order grains in bulk for $$ savings led me to get a grain mill early on. I asked for a Corona style mill for Christmas a few years ago so it didn't cost me anything. I get a very consistent crush and reasonable efficiency numbers.

A roller mill is in the future, but there is no rush for one since the Corona works quite well.

OP - You might need to find another supplier. I would also suggest that you make a complaint. Something might have slipped in their mill and they may be unaware of the problem. If they purposefully send grain milled that way they need to be made aware that it it unacceptable... Getting a crush like that should never happen to a customer.

 

[slym2none]

My LHBS is great - I asked for my one mash's grains to be double-crushed for BIAB, and they had no problem. It was only 2-1/2# of grain anyway, wasn't gonna take forever.

 

[douglasbarbin]

Reading these tales and the want to order grains in bulk for $$ savings led me to get a grain mill early on. I asked for a Corona style mill for Christmas a few years ago so it didn't cost me anything. I get a very consistent crush and reasonable efficiency numbers.

A roller mill is in the future, but there is no rush for one since the Corona works quite well.

OP - You might need to find another supplier. I would also suggest that you make a complaint. Something might have slipped in their mill and they may be unaware of the problem. If they purposefully send grain milled that way they need to be made aware that it it unacceptable... Getting a crush like that should never happen to a customer.

The Corona style mills give a pretty good crush, but they are S...L....O......W! I used to have one and now I have a Barley Crusher, and that one is still too slow for my liking. I do 10-gallon batches, and some high-gravity beers use between 30 and 40 pounds of grain. The last thing I want to do is spend an hour in a hot garage milling grain. YMMV, of course.

 

[kh54s10]

The Corona style mills give a pretty good crush, but they are S...L....O......W! I used to have one and now I have a Barley Crusher, and that one is still too slow for my liking. I do 10-gallon batches, and some high-gravity beers use between 30 and 40 pounds of grain. The last thing I want to do is spend an hour in a hot garage milling grain. YMMV, of course.

MMdoesV, a lot. I have a drill on mine and can do 20 pounds in less than 10 minutes. As fast as any roller mill I have seen. In fact I do not mill as fast as it will go. I have not seen any difference in the crush from going slow or opening it up..

 

[barnaclebob]

Another vote for a terrible crush. Just ask for your money back.

A+ job on giving good pictures to illustrate the crush, it should be the standard for "is this a bad crush" threads.

 

[wilserbrewer]

The Corona style mills give a pretty good crush, but they are S...L....O......W! .

My corona mill isn't slow at all....I've done upwards of 35 lbs without issue.

I'll keep my corona, no thanks to the Barley Crusher.

Were you turning it by hand?

 

[Qhrumphf]

I used a Corona for years, by hand, and it was painfully slow and liked to shred husks. Good for BIAB, less so for a proper MLT. I upgraded to a drill powered Barley Crusher and love it. Since you're in Southern MD (assuming that means ~St. Marys and not ~Salisbury or something), you should be able to venture over to myLHBS in Falls Church. He sells the Barley Crusher for less than the online guys do. And if you can wait until Black Friday, he usually discounts it even more. That's how I got my BC a few years ago, and IIRC it was <$100.

 

[Qhrumphf]

I just realized from the first pics that the "sorted tablespoon" was all crushed grain, thought it was crushed left and uncrushed right. If the stuff on the right was also "crushed", uh, yeah, I'll concur with everyone else and say that's an absolutely horrid crush.

 

[dsaavedra]

Thanks for all the replies guys. Maybe I will just bite the bullet and get an RO filter and grain mill at the same time. I am in St. Mary's so I will check out that store in Falls Church. Usually I use Maryland Homebrew in Columbia as my LHBS since I spend ~60% of my time up that way.

Well I went ahead and used the grains today. Everything went pretty smoothly actually. I got a stuck sparge but I'm not convinced it was from all the flour I created because when I emptied the spent grains out of my tun I saw that my SS braided hose was a little "bottlenecked" right where it attaches to the valve. I think I may have mashed it when I was stirring in my sparge water. I just stirred up the stuck sparge and vourlaufed again and it was fine after that.

THAT BEING SAID my efficiency was pretty terrible. My preboil gravity was 1.030 for 6.5 gallons (centennial blonde, so it was already a light recipe). I plugged this into a calculator and saw that if I hit my target final volume of 5.5 gallons my post-boil gravity was going to be considerably lower than it should have been. I decided to compensate for this by boiling more vigorously than I normally do, and boiling for an additional 10 minutes. A few adjustments to the hop schedule and this was no problem. I ended up with a hair over 5 gallons in fermenter @ 1.040 SG, which is exactly what my target gravity was supposed to be. According to Brewer's Friend this gives me an overall efficiency of ~64% which is significantly lower than my last batch using this same system (and grains from my LHBS), which yielded me 79% efficiency.

So all in all I think I made the best of it but I am not a happy customer by any means. I am getting in contact with the retailer now.

 

[kh54s10]

I just realized from the first pics that the "sorted tablespoon" was all crushed grain, thought it was crushed left and uncrushed right. If the stuff on the right was also "crushed", uh, yeah, I'll concur with everyone else and say that's an absolutely horrid crush.

The sorted table spoon was what one tablespoon contained. The pile on the right were the whole grains that he pulled out from the crushed.......

 

[AQUILAS]

I am getting in contact with the retailer now.

Good to hear things still went somewhat well.

Update us on what the retailer does after you notify them. I was just about to email the online shop I got my grains from to tell them about their grains, but I'm skeptical about what they'll even do about it.

 

[dsaavedra]

The sorted table spoon was what one tablespoon contained. The pile on the right were the whole grains that he pulled out from the crushed.......

This is correct, I simply scooped a tablespoons worth of grain from the bag of "crushed" grains and then sorted it. On the right is all of the uncrushed grains from that tablespoon.

 

[dsaavedra]

I just finished speaking with a customer service rep. I confirmed that @AQUILAS received his problem-crush from the same retailer as me and I informed them of this as well. They seem genuinely concerned about the issue. She said they inspected their mills while they were talking to me and they were unable to reproduce the issue. She sent me a return tag and asked that I send my second grainbill back to them for inspection so they can hopefully figure out what went wrong. They are going to send me replacement grains for that grainbill on Monday, and they refunded me the cost of the grains I used today, which was very kind of them... I did not expect that.

So all in all my brew day went about as good as it could and customer service made everything right. I just hope they can figure out what the problem was and that it didn't affect too many other orders!

 

[sudbuddy]

I've been buying grains from two LHBS. I tell them I want the grains crushed two times and I get the impression they don't want to do that. Each time I still get what looks like whole grains vs crushed so I guess they are not crushing the grains fine enough.

It's frustration for me because I brew BIAB and I have to driver 1+ hrs to get to the store. I am about to order a grain mill, not sure which one yet just to not have to deal with the LHBS. the guys are super nice but it's like you are asking them for something free when trying to get the grain crushed to my liking.

Matter of fact, will be picking up an order tomorrow. May ask then to double crush finer and see what happens.

Bummer. Are they using a sh!tty mill or something? Mine does 10 lbs in less than a minute so I've got zero problems double milling for people. Tell them to get their act together and get a Schmidling MaltMill with a flywheel motor

 

[Qhrumphf]

Bummer. Are they using a sh!tty mill or something? Mine does 10 lbs in less than a minute so I've got zero problems double milling for people. Tell them to get their act together and get a Schmidling MaltMill with a flywheel motor

Possible that some clown adjusted the gap and the staffer milling the grain was not experienced enough to know better. Some staffers at homebrew shops don't know what they're doing. Sad but true.

I will never, ever, ever trust a homebrew shop (or any homebrew supplier whatsoever) to mill my grain for me. If the local shop does it, who knows how consistent the crush will be. If the local shop's supplier does it, then who knows how fresh it is.

If you're only steeping a pound of specialty grains and won't get much extraction anyway, then store crush is fine. But for all-grain brewers, like I said already, zero excuse for not buying your own mill. You're only asking for problems if you don't.

 

[sudbuddy]

According to Brewer's Friend this gives me an overall efficiency of ~64% which is significantly lower than my last batch using this same system (and grains from my LHBS), which yielded me 79% efficiency.

So all in all I think I made the best of it but I am not a happy customer by any means. I am getting in contact with the retailer now.

Lesson learned? Support your LHBS because they really care about you. Heck, they probably even know you by name if you brew enough. To the online folks you are just another anonymous transaction. What's an extra $5-10 when you can go home happy and confident and not all "I'ma start a thread on HBTey?" Keep local brewers employed, shop at your LHBS.

Rant over. Sorry. Oktoberfests just came out and I'm, um, researching...

 

[sudbuddy]

Possible that some clown adjusted the gap and the staffer milling the grain was not experienced enough to know better. Some staffers at homebrew shops don't know what they're doing. Sad but true.

I will never, ever, ever trust a homebrew shop (or any homebrew supplier whatsoever) to mill my grain for me. If the local shop does it, who knows how consistent the crush will be. If the local shop's supplier does it, then who knows how fresh it is.

If you're only steeping a pound of specialty grains and won't get much extraction anyway, then store crush is fine. But for all-grain brewers, like I said already, zero excuse for not buying your own mill. You're only asking for problems if you don't.

You're absolutely right. You know me @Qhrumphf and I think you know I run a shop. I still tell people to buy a mill and do it their own damn selves. It doesn't save me much work, but then if people have low efficiency they only have themselves to blame. I can't speak for other shops, but I have a really, really good mill and I keep it tight. I still think that as a brewer you should try to have control over every aspect of your brew and part of that is crushing your grain to your exact specifications.

 

[sudbuddy]

Having a shop is nice too, I get to listen to The Specials and Op Ivy, etc. all day and nobody can tell me to listen to crappy Mumford's or DMB to keep my paycheck. Plus, if a customer recognizes the band playing I give them an automatic 10% off, AAAAND they usually bring me beer. Life is good

 

[Qhrumphf]

Having a shop is nice too, I get to listen to The Specials and Op Ivy, etc. all day and nobody can tell me to listen to crappy Mumford's or DMB to keep my paycheck. Plus, if a customer recognizes the band playing I give them an automatic 10% off, AAAAND they usually bring me beer. Life is good

Hah. I recall walking into my local shop (said Falls Church shop) a few years ago and they were playing DK one day (it was either "Kill the Poor" or "Holiday In Cambodia", don't remember which), and getting in a conversation with the owner about it. I dont' remember them playing music at all since they expanded and took over the neighboring storefront too, or maybe I haven't noticed it, but I still remember that. It was funny.

 

[sudbuddy]

Hah. I recall walking into my local shop (said Falls Church shop) a few years ago and they were playing DK one day (it was either "Kill the Poor" or "Holiday In Cambodia", don't remember which), and getting in a conversation with the owner about it. I dont' remember them playing music at all since they expanded and took over the neighboring storefront too, or maybe I haven't noticed it, but I still remember that. It was funny.

Nice! We've got a customer named Dan Morey (you would know him, he came up with the Morey algorithm for SRM that Beersmith, Brewer's Friend, et. al use) and he has an encyclopedic knowledge of all things punk rock. He can literally quote the last line of ANY Bad Brains or Black Flag song on command and can list entire catalogs of EPs in order from pretty much any pre-1985 punk band. I am constantly in awe of this and keep trying to stump him. It cannot be done.

 

[brew703]

Bummer. Are they using a sh!tty mill or something? Mine does 10 lbs in less than a minute so I've got zero problems double milling for people. Tell them to get their act together and get a Schmidling MaltMill with a flywheel motor

It doesnt look like a ****ty mill. It's pretty big and electric. I asked for double crush but I still get whole grains. I'll take a picture tomorrow and post to view.
The guys are really nice, however I dont think their mill is set to get a good crush. I even tell them i am a BIAB brewer.

Oh well, I'll be requesting a mill and a new burner for Christmas. My current burner takes forever to heat 2.75 gallons to a boil. No way it will be able to handle boiling 5 gallons.