I've got a single roller mill.
I'm not comfortable with letting it sit around with all that sugary starch clinging to it.
I never have and I condition my malt. I check for spiders underneath, check the gap, and grind away.
Not sure that starch is sugary until you mash it.
Ever heard of crystal or caramel malt? IIRC, all malt will contain at least some sugar as a result of the malting process. The bugs would probably settle for some starch on the menu if the sugars were in short supply.
Single roller mill? Am I not getting something? Isn't that a bit like one handed clapping in a forest with falling trees with nary a witness?
That'd be the Phil Mill, one roller and a plate, the plate acting as the second surface.Single roller mill? Am I not getting something?
I use a leaf blower to clean mine.
That'd be the Phil Mill, one roller and a plate, the plate acting as the second surface.
I think I had a mouse live in mine last winter.
Bingo! It's the now extinct Phil Mill I. It's a great little mill. Too bad they are no longer in production. Basically the roller smashes the malt against a stationary plate. One moving part. Elegant simplicity and it produces a first class grist. It has always been under-rated IMO for reasons beyond me. It's very low on the bling scale. That could have something to do with it. The feature I like most is that it is adjustable while it's running. All malt mills should have that feature. Adjustable on fly and easily dialed in visually with no need for feeler gauges or fooling around adjusting eccentric bushings etc.
Catt22,
They get "dissed" because they're darned hard to crank for a big grain bill. When my old Iowa brewing buddies and I stepped up to 20 gallons from 5, the Phil Mill just was too much work. We got an also now extinct Valley Mill and motorized it. That was in 1996 and I've still got it. My buddy still has his Phil Mill, last I heard, though mostly he uses a 3 roller Crank 'n' Stein.
No arguments on the Phil's crush, it's very good.
Cheers,
John
Catt22,
Which PhilMill do you have, the original brass & wood one with no bushings or the "2", with the aluminum body. It's the brass one I'm talking about. 5-10 lb grists were OK, but some of the 30-40 lb ones we were doin' in Iowa; forget about it!
I can tell you that fully loaded, the ValleyMill was easier to crank by hand; less torque per revolution. Not that one revolution was killer either way, but a couple of thousand of 'em??? Ok, maybe that's an exaggeration. Not to mention that the longer rollers needed less revolutions anyway.
{snip} The good news is that generally everyone loves whatever mill they happen to buy. That means that you can't really go wrong, or at least one will never know the difference.
THIS. I read several long threads arguing the merits of this or that mill, until I realized this: everyone was passionately attached to their mill, and that would hardly be the case if one or another was producing an inferior crush.
Conclusion: any mill can produce good grist. So I immediately ordered out a bargain-basement "Corona" type mill off eBay, and have been happy ever since. I don't clean it; it's mounted in a 5-gallon bucket, and I just shake & tap out all the flour & dust that I can, and put it away in the garage until next time. So far, after a dozen or so batches, no signs of any vermin.
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