Crushing grain in a ....paper shredder?

[weirdboy]

After reading the thread about using file cabinets to store beer, I got to thinking about other office supplies that could be adapted to homebrewing purposes. Actually, that's not quite true. I have already been thinking about the paper shredder since a bit earlier when I looked at it and realized how it already had all this stuff I'd have to scrabble together from various sources in order to adapt a pasta maker to do the work.

The shredder currently sitting under the desk in my office has several merits for the DIYer:

1. Inexpensive
2. Already motorized
3. Automatically switches on/off
4. Comes with a bucket for catching the results, onto which the shredder already mounts perfectly.

Demerits:
1. Will it pulverize the hulls? Needs testing.
2. Shredder Oil Stout




Anyone tried this and can tell me what the crush (or lack of crush, or shred, or flour) looks like when you pour some grain through one?

If not, I plan to try this out tomorrow. I just need to go pick up some grain from my LHBS first.

Even if the crush is wrong, I figure there's probably a way I can mod it to improve the situation. The only other thing it's missing out of the box would be a grain hopper.

 

[pizzaman]

I'm sure lots of people can come up with lots of reasons why this is a bad idea, but I say give it a go and post lots of pics!! I've got an extra shredder sitting around and I'd love to be able to buy grain in bulk.

 

[Denny's Evil Concoctions]

Post pics of your crush. Wether this work out or not it will be interesting none the less.

 

[conpewter]

This would be very cool if it worked, looking forward to results!

 

[KatoBaggins]

Yes, I'm not happy with my pasta maker unit. I have a paper shredder that just sits in the corner looking pretty, hardly ever gets used.

 

[Picobrew]

Is it diamond cut or strip or confetti? Either way, I imagine you will have to run the grain through a couple times.

 

[Nurmey]

This is a fun idea. Please post pictures of your results.

 

[Rick500]

Mine's kind of oily. I don't think it's vegetable oil. (Well actually, now that I think about it, maybe it is.)

 

[alpo]

I don't think it will crush it nearly fine enough, but even if it doesn't work at all, you could still crush it again in a real mill.

 

[ChshreCat]

Screw pictures. We want video.

 

[Denny's Evil Concoctions]

Yeah, that way we can see the smoke coming from the motor.

 

[jds]

I dunno -- this may have merit. I'll have to gauge the gap on my shredder. I wonder if it would work better to get a cheap new strip shredder, or let the old one (which has never, never been oiled) switch jobs.

Wait! I got it! Oil it with olive oil, so you never have to aerate again!

 

[EvilTOJ]

This is an awful idea. I can't wait to see pics/video.

 

[camiller]

One thing I can tell you is that when you run a typical consumer grade paper shredder for an extended length of time (approx 10 min) the motors thermal cut out will kick in and you'll have to wait for it to cool off before continuing. Looking forward to seeing how it works.

 

[Revvy]

*subscribes to see the carnage*


I love it I hope it works

 

[IrregularPulse]

Mine is also coated with some type of oil that I wouldn't necessarily trust. aka "Subscribed for pics/video. Smoking electronics are kind of a hobby of mine"

 

[TommyBoy]

(Looking down at my paper shredder.)

No way man! But I would love to see the video!!!

 

[Laughing_Gnome_Invisible]

I did it, so you don't have to!

No milled grain. I also had to feed some paper with it to set off the auto thingy. Crosscut shredder FWIW

 

[Tonedef131]

Ahahahahaha

 

[the_bird]

Should be interesting, but if this works at all, isn't it going to cut the grain rather than crush it?

 

[Catt22]

By shredding paper at the same time as you mill the grain you can eliminate the need to buy rice hulls.

I think that the outcome will ultimately be a ruined shredder, but this experiment will be interesting in any case.

 

[Evan!]

I did it, so you don't have to!

No milled grain. I also had to feed some paper with it to set off the auto thingy. Crosscut shredder FWIW

classic. :rockin:

 

[Laughing_Gnome_Invisible]

The easiest way to make this work would be to post on the Mythbuster's site that a homebrewer converted a paper shredder to mill grain so perfectly that they got better efficiency than Budweiser............All we would have to do is to watch the show and take notes.

 

[bad coffee]

It might work. The MB crew always seem to love the 'get drunk at work' myths. . .

B

 

[adx]

I applaud the attempt.

 

[pizzaman]

Ok, so to solve the first problem of having to feed paper you would need to have a paper shredder with an on/off/auto switch so that you can set it to on and you wouldn't need to feed paper through at the same time. To solve the problem of it not doing anything useful you would either need to take apart the shredder and replace the shredding mechanism with rollers, or just use a plastic bag and mallet to crush grain.

 

[The Pol]

Or you can just buy a mill

 

[Professor Frink]

How about shredding some rice paper, you can make a Budweiser clone

 

[weirdboy]

OK so I gave this a shot today and my "crush" came out almost exactly like what Evan posted above, sans paper. I didn't seem to have any trouble with having to feed paper through, but maybe I just got lucky in that regard.

However, the crush, if it can be called that, was severely disappointing. It looked like I just threw it in a food processor and hit the "pulse" button a couple of times, leaving most of the grain unscathed and a small portion completely torn up. The existing blades are just no good for this purpose.

So, then I started looking at possibly modifying the shredder. I took mine apart and discovered that in order to replace the rollers I'd have to muck around with a bunch of gears that are apparently glued onto the ends of the pins on the cutting blades.
In addition to this, there isn't really a good way to adjust the spacing without replacing, or at least heavily modifying, most of the existing mechanism.

The only possibility I can think of is if one could find smooth rollers that are *exactly* the right size to substitute for the existing blades. Then you could swap those out, glue the gears back onto the ends, and have at it.

The other thing I thought of was maybe just salvaging the motor (and possibly gears) from it to drive a pasta maker grain mill.


Here's a pic of my result:

 

[carnevoodoo]

A for effort! Hilarious effort.