Milling twice

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MLBinID

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I read a lot on here that people recommend milling their grains twice to improve efficiency. After a chat with some friends they suggested you shouldn't get a too fine of milling if you do this as long as the mill is set at the right grind.

I decided to give it a try. Jumped from 73% efficiency to about 81% efficiency. A little amusing because now our ESB is no longer an ESB according to style guidelines. :D

Anyway...I'm wondering if I'm compromising anything in milling twice. I read somewhere that too fine a grind can increase tannins. That said, I don't think our grind was too fine. You could still see the hulls. Then again, I'm not sure what "too fine" would look like.

I'm just curious if I should incorporate this into my brewing now. I'll be brewing again in a few days so no time to taste to see if there are any off flavors. Personally, I think efficiency is overrated and consistency is more important. BUT.....I like the idea of 80% efficiency. I just don't want it to make my beer taste bad.

Thoughts?
 
If your grist is not thoroughly crushed after one pass through the mill, a second pass is a good idea IMO. Apparently your numbers reflect this.
 
Many local shiops mill on the coarse side to avoid stuck sparge and sell more grain. So the posts you are reading about milling twice are more geared towards those who are getting the grains crushed at their LHBS.

If you have your own mill and it is set right there is no need to double crush.
 
I have a Barley Crusher mill, got it because I was getting horrible efficiency using wheat with the crush from Northern Brewer. I kept it set to factory spacing and my efficiency shot up to 79% on the first batch I made with my own mill. Next two batches also hit 79% efficiency so it seems I know my common efficiency. I'm happy at 79%, I actually don't want to go too high in efficiency myself even though it means you can use less grain. I order 2 batches of supplies at a time and have no room for bulk sacks of grains so the way I look at it I would just be throwing out the excess anyway, I mean... I don't really see much point in storing .5lb of a left over grain.

Consistency is definitely most important in nearly everybody's book. Some do enjoy pulling the highest efficiency possible, and that's cool too, but if you get high efficiency you better be able to keep it consistent.


Rev.
 
An important goal of milling is to get large pieces of husk so you get a good filter bed. The general guideline is to crush as fine as possible and still get good sized husk pieces. I double grind and still get large husks (and a lot of flour). I do condition my malt (~100 ml water for ~9 lbs grain) and this helps a lot to keep the husks pretty intact. With a lot of flour I just have to be a little careful mashing in so I don't get a lot of doughballs.

I often see people saying a lot of flour will make for a stuck sparge. This is not the case, the flour is readily converted to sugars during the mash. Actually the more flour, the faster the conversion. The problem is lots of flour often means small husk pieces, which will often lead to a stuck mash.
 
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