New mill at the LHBS!

[jwitt]

Oh, how sweet it is! I don't know where the boss man ordered it from- he placed the order during the holidays and there wasn't a heck of a lot of time for discussion in the retail madness. But now this beast is in place, happily chewing through mountains of grain.

The hopper holds well over 15 pounds, so it's kind of funny to put an 8oz-16oz batch of steeping grains through the mill! The motor is enclosed in the cabinet, and the collection bucket (lined with a bag) goes down there too, keeping the dust and flour from going all over the store. 15 pounds of grain takes about a minute to crush.

I need to brew something crushed with this machine, but the results look good to the naked eye- well-crushed kernels, nicely separated husks, and a bit of flour. The results are far far better than putting a batch through the last mill twice.

 

[KingHippo]

She's a beaut

 

[jwitt]

After a few months of using this mill, I'm happy to report mash efficiency somewhere between 75%-80% with batch sparging 5 gallon batches in a 10 gallon round cooler. (The 80% that my only-kinda-dialed-in Beersmith spits out seems high to me even after a few runs with consistent hydrometer and refractometer readings).

The real advantage to this nice crush has been in bigger beers. The efficiency falloff I'd expect doesn't happen until you shoot for a pretty darn high OG, higher than 1.070. Throwing in the extra pound or two to compensate for lazy sparging methods just isn't necessary below that mark.