My Ugly Junk- Corona Mill Station...

[Mothman]

Those that have their mill mounted in/on a bucket (or other), do you take the mill out to clean it? Or is cleaning it actually a necessary thing?

 

[ancientmariner52]

My mill is mounted in a bottomless bucket, with the tp of the mill casting level with a hole in the top of the bucket. To clean, I remove the top and blow everything out with compressed air. Outdoors, of course. Be sure to hold your breath. I do this before and after milling.

 

[Mothman]

OK. I don't have anything fancy shmancy like an air compressor, but I can probably get er done with some inverted banging. lol

Main thing is, I'm not needing to actually wash it, good to know.

 

[wilserbrewer]

I think I clean my corona mill bi annually whether it needs it or not.

That usually coincides with a little maintenance.

A good shake and a hand slap to free up the dust is all that’s required imo.

 

[phug]

OK. I don't have anything fancy shmancy like an air compressor, but I can probably get er done with some inverted banging. lol

Main thing is, I'm not needing to actually wash it, good to know.

Moisture would be bad. Leads to rusting.

 

[MMJfan]

I've had mine for 4 years and have yet to give it a thorough cleaning. As wilser said, a few good hand bumps and shakes and you're good to go...

 

[Mothman]

I'm standing in Home Depot about to grab a couple 5 gallon homer buckets for building my ugly junk once the mill arrives... But realized I don't actually know how big these mills are.

Are the 5 gal homer buckets big enough for these mills to fit down into? Or are people using larger, maybe 6 gal buckets.

These homers look narrow to me.

 

[nmfree]

Are the 5 gal homer buckets big enough for these mills to fit down into? Or are people using larger, maybe 6 gal buckets.

AFAIK all home center 5 gallon pails are the same size, and should be big enough.

 

[ancientmariner52]

I used a 5 gallon.

 

[Mothman]

Good stuff, thanks folks.

 

[Mothman]

My Victoria mill arrived today and I've been playing around with it, cleaned it up, testing to see how the adjustments work,etc.

I don't have any grain at the moment but was testing by running a bit of popcorn through.

Is it normal, or at least is it OK, that the moving crush plate doesn't hold parallel to the fixed one when the grain is going through? See picture.

Initially the moving plate was loose on the auger shaft, so I switched the cotter pin to the shallower set of grooves in the metal ring, and it holds the plate very tightly now.

But the auger / plate shaft as a whole doesn't stay true when turning grain through, and has a bit of play, resulting in the plate going out of parallel.

It still ground up the popcorn so I'm hoping it won't matter. Just looking for any input from those who have had some time with their mills.

Maybe by tightening the adjustment right down, it may hold more true? Or maybe it's just that popcorn is so hard, and grain won't push the plate out as much.

 

[ancientmariner52]

My vast expertise consists of several years of using one Victoria mill, and info I have gleaned from HBT. However, I've spent 50 years operating, building, and sometimes designing precision machinery.

These mills are definitely NOT precision machinery. They are loose, sloppy, out of round and out of square. The only good thing about them is that they work very well if you just let them get on with it. The rotating plate is loose so that it can align itself with the mill body, which probably isn't perpendicular to the shaft.

I too moved the cotter pin to the alternate position, and added washers to stabilize the cross bar. Other than that, just let it wallow around. Popcorn may be a little like trying to grind ball bearings, so you should probably get some malt or deer corn to try it out on. Good luck!

 

[Mothman]

Sounds good, I'll give it a real test with grains on my next brew day.

Your post made me think though... Maybe the slop in the rotating plate is intentional and tightening it up by moving the cotter pin or installing a bolt is fooling a brilliant engineering decision.

 

[wilserbrewer]

HD bucket will likely work fine even though I believe they are 70 mil. The heavier and larger 90 mil buckets are a better choice if you can find one. One user had trouble with the thinner HD buckets when cutting them up many posts ago iirc.

This is the “ugly junk” thread, ideally you should wash out an old joint compound bucket you found on the side of the road much stronger when considering you are mounting the mill with screws through the side of the bucket.

 

[Mothman]

So in true ugly junk fashion I mounted the mill about an inch or two too low, so the auger / handle shift rests on the lower catch bucket.

Still will work but will give a bit more resistance when turning.

Short of remounting the mill (don't want to, as it'll leave open holes where I've already cut and drilled) or cutting a small notch in the catch bucket (would prefer to leave the catch bucket unaltered), any of you smart people have an idea how I can keep the mill bucket lifted up an extra couple inches?

A good thick application off duct tape to make a ridge on the mill bucket? Seems appropriate.

 

[ancientmariner52]

I think I would remount the mill, and use the duct tape to cover the unused holes. Then, when I had it all working to my satisfaction, I'd get a new bucket and build it again, now that I know where the holes go. This goes against the 'ugly junk' ethos, but that's just how I roll. [emoji16]

 

[Mothman]

That would mean my 45 minutes of work on this would be wasted.

I think I'll just pretend you suggested to go with the duct tape collar.

 

[Mothman]

On a side note the cheap Homer bucket works fine.

 

[Mothman]

So AncientMariner, I ended up taking your advice, lol, and moved the mill, taped over the offending drill holes.

I haven't cut the bottom out of the mill bucket yet... I can't decide if I want to do that, or just leave it alone and crush into the one bucket and then dump out.

Anyway, all I have for grain currently is some remnant left overs that was already crushed at the supplier, but I ran some through to try it out. Seems like it should work pretty great, once I get the thing adjusted properly.

Maybe not overly ugly, but I did have my old jig saw burn out cutting the mounting 2x4.... dad gave me an ancient one he had laying around, when we bought our house, today was the first time I ever used it. Rusty old blade, but it worked... at least just long enough to make two cuts and then something inside the saw went kablooey.

The 2x4 itself was torn off an old homemade shelf that the old owners of our house left behind and we kept it in our crawlspace.

And the duct tape covering the holes from my misplaced initial mounting probably count for something.

In terms of crush, I uploaded a couple images of the grain, after it went through my mill. Again, this grain was already crushed, but I could tell it was getting ground up even more as it went through my mill. Any input on how it looks would be appreciated (if you can tell from the pictures). There is definitely dust and some flour, but the picture doesn't really show it, as when I grabbed handfulls of the grain, the dust/flour stayed behind in the bowl.

When I put the grain bag in it's plastic bag and give it a good shake, there is a definite build up of flour/dust on the bottom of the bag.

 

[ancientmariner52]

Mothman, that crush looks like mine, it ought to make beer. I've never bothered to calculate efficiencies, but I've hit my numbers pretty close, except one time using a lot of wheat. I didn't know that wheat needed a tighter mill setting, so my OG was way low.

 

[Mothman]

Forgot to update... I used my ugly milled grain for the first time a couple weeks ago. Only hit about 72% efficiency.

So I tightened it up a couple spins and will try again next time.

 

[pricelessbrewing]

Forgot to update... I used my ugly milled grain for the first time a couple weeks ago. Only hit about 72% efficiency.

So I tightened it up a couple spins and will try again next time.

Measure the conversion efficiency next time, it's a better metric for grain crush, since mash/brewhouse also involves sparging, equipment losses, and how much grain is in the recipe. Conversion efficiency removes all those variabels.

 

[Mothman]

Conversion efficiency always confuses me... But using the Brewer's Friend efficiency calculator, I input my grain bill, and for volume, if I'm wanting to find my conversion efficiency I think I use my strike water volume?

And for gravity I used my preboil gravity.

That gave me about 80% in the calculator, and I think that's conversion efficiency using the numbers I did?

 

[pricelessbrewing]

Conversion efficiency always confuses me... But using the Brewer's Friend efficiency calculator, I input my grain bill, and for volume, if I'm wanting to find my conversion efficiency I think I use my strike water volume?

And for gravity I used my preboil gravity.

That gave me about 80% in the calculator, and I think that's conversion efficiency using the numbers I did?

Unfortunately, brewersfriend is using an inaccurate formula as it's calculated from strike volume and grain bill, and doesn't account for the volume of the increased wort from the dissolved sugars/starches/protein. It always reads lower then it actually is, IIRC it's something like ~8% lower.

You can run it through the evaluation tool in my mash software (link in sig) for a more accurate number.

 

[Mothman]

Assuming I used your Efficiency tool properly, it's saying I had ~ 88% conversion efficiency.

 

[probablynotnick]

My wife and I just bought a house and look at what was left in the garage!!

View media item 69371View media item 69370
[Edit] Retry at posting the pics

 

[Tarpon87]

Brewery upgrade! Decided to give my mill a more permanent home in a vacant corner. Some scrap 2x4 and cut up pallets and now i have a milling station.

 

[NRF]

Nice job Tarpon!

 

[NitrogenWidget]

I made one of these.
Using galvanized ductwork to hold the grain. works amazing for 5 gal. batches.
but, my cheap harbor freight drill cannot handle the grain for 10 gallon batches.
It basically starts smoking, overheats and wont work over load.

What drills are people using?
I'm thinking I need a hammer drill or might be time to buy a two roller crusher and use one of the washing machine motors I have.

 

[Tarpon87]

I bought a HF hammer drill made by Chicago Electric. Thing is a beast. Sale price was around $20 i believe, it laughs at crushing grain