Grain mills and dark grains

[shanecb]

I just bought a mill today (Barley Crusher) and I have a question about crushing dark grains. The mill is set at the factory setting, 0.039in, and I was testing it out with some spare grains to get a sense of what the crush looks like at this setting. Some 2-row I ran through came out looking pretty good (definitely better than what I used to get at the LHBS), but I ran some black patent and it seems to have practically destroyed the grain. Very fine and proportionately more flour. Is it typical at all for dark grains to be more fine compared to a normal 2-row at the same gap setting?

I can try to get a decent picture if it would help, but my cell doesn't take great pictures.

 

[Hammy71]

Remember the dark grains are essentially 2-row that has been roasted. It's a little smaller and 'crisper'. So, it'll crumble.

 

[shanecb]

Makes sense. I was more worried about the shredded husk that seems to be in the black patent crush. I suppose a handful of rice hulls in the mash can help with that, though.

 

[theredben]

It will make that big of a difference. Your base 2-row makes up the majority of the grain bill and will be the foundation of your grain bed filter. If you mashed only black patent malt I could see a problem sparging, but it would be almost impossible to actually drink the resulting beer, so that is obviously not a problem.

 

[AtlantaBeerBrewing]

Agreed, 2-row is the major part of my bill's, so even if you did run a bit of patent to color, it wouldn't cause an issue due to your filter bed.

 

[StoutattheDevil]

most of the dark grains your going to be milling are de-husked. the resulting grind is going to be close to powder. Rice hulls can be used if your doing a big grain bill of dark malts, but with the amount of base grains that do contain a husk that go into the average batch, the rice hulls usually are not necessary.

 

[RM-MN]

You might want to look up info about conditioning your malt before crushing. It's mostly adding a little water to soften those hard kernels so they crush instead of shattering.