crush question again !

[matc]

I brewed using a different mill last weekend and I had a terrible efficiency. The mill is a crankandstein and I found out the gap setting was much looser than my barley crusher. Then I remembered that I used a credit card on the barley crusher so I did the same with the cranknstein. The crush seemed pretty fine to me so I used my feeler gauge and it's around 0,033".

We never had a problem with the barley crusher so what do you think of this crush ?

 

[Cider123]

It looks like all the grains have been cracked open and that's all you need. You don't need to take the contents of each grain and obliterate it into powder. A grain is like a closed suitcase full of carbohydrates. The purpose of a mill is to open up the suitcase and expose the contents to the water, not maul the contents into small bits. My BC is at the factory setting of .039 and works just fine, though I do double crush to make sure every grain is hit.

Perhaps there are other reasons for you efficency issues? I would also check to see if you are calculating it correctly. How confident are you that your thermometer is accurate for mashing temps?

 

[matc]

Well I've got a thermapen and it's supposed to be super accurate.

I'm pretty confident the problem came from the mill. I crushed my grain with the cranknstein before I realized it was way too coarse. There was quite a big difference compared to the barley crusher.