Grain mill settings for BIAB

[enkamania]

My barley crusher should be here next week, I was wondering what setting folks use to crush grain when they BIAB?

 

[avidhomebrewer]

I like to set my mill up for a crush resulting in: 1/3 husks, 1/3 solids, 1/3 flour, give or take.

 

[RM-MN]

You can set it pretty fine since with the bag you have a huge area of very fine filter so you don't have to worry about a stuck sparge that the traditional brewers worry about. The finer the crush, the quicker the conversion as it takes less time for the water to soak to the center of the particles to activate the enzymes. If you have any doubt, do a coarser crush and check how long it takes to convert using iodine. Then try it again with a fine crush.

 

[mikes]

I just got a barley crusher and used it for one brew so far, a 10.5 pound grain bill. I used the default setting it came on, but ran the grain through twice. I ended up tight at 80% efficiency. Previously using grain that was pre-milled and getting right around 70%.

 

[ElDuderino]

I set mine for .022". Any finer and the kernels weren't going through the rollers easily. I am getting high 70's to low 80's in efficiency, depending on how big my grainbill is. I suppose you could grind twice, but I'm happy with my numbers and it doesn't seem worth it.

 

[erikpete18]

Make sure you condition your malt so your husks don't get too shredded. BIAB doesn't have to worry about stuck sparges, but you can still leach tannins from shredded husks. If you condition your malt you can grind it a little tighter without shredding the husks, which will definitely help with efficiency. I'm still playing around with my BC, but right now I'm a little tighter than factory settings and am at ~80% on my last two batches. If factory setting is 0.39 and is set at 12:00 on the side, I'm at either 1:00 or 11:00, depending on which side you are looking at.

 

[Atvar]

How do you condition your malt before grinding? These first few times I've used my corona mill I've been playing with the crush. I have set to make a lot of flour now and am pretty happy with the efficiency. Conditioning malt, though, never crossed my mind.

 

[erikpete18]

Conditioning just requires moistening the malt before you grind it. I just spread it out on a flat surface and spritz it with a water bottle. Fold it over/mix it around a little, hit it with the water again just enough to very slightly moisten the husks and let it sit for 15 min., then you can grind like normal. It makes the husks more flexible so they don't get torn as much when you mill them. Not sure what it would do for a corona mill, but with my BC I get a lot fewer torn husks and could tighten it up a bit.

 

[ultravista]

You should be able to do the same process with a Corona (or clone) mill. I remember reading about it here on the boards.

 

[enkamania]

It arrived today with a broken base. G

 

[Token]

NOOOOOOO!! Dang. Gonna contact the company?

 

[mtbiker278]

I'm gonna have to give this grain conditioning thing a whirl along with adjusted my BC. My mash efficiency has dropped to about 70% from 78-80%. I'm starting to think it's the Canadian 2-row I got from my group buy. We'll see if this helps.