One positive thing about my LHBS and their bad mill

[t_met]

So I'm in process of my first brew with my Barley Crusher. Before this, I always used my LHBS's mill. It was notorious for giving a coarse grain.

This session I've had my first encounter with doughballs. Took me a little more time stirring + cold outside tonight meant I missed my initial mash-in temp by 3 degrees F (actually thought I may overshoot while pouring in grain). Before this, It was just an easy stir, all was mixed and sit back.

I didn't know how good I had it with the coarse grind.

 

[924RACR]

+1 to that; we had exactly the same observation after finally getting our own.

We took that as a sign we're finally doing something right - having the same problems everyone else talks about!

 

[acidrain]

I have low efficiency, and never get dough-balls. I'm seriously considering getting (building) my own mill.
I'm gonna start working on it this weekend.

 

[t_met]

The overall efficiency improvement was 7 points (68% w/ LHBS vs 75% with my new mill). I used to think it wasn't worth it because that equates to only a few pounds of grain. So I'm buying a $130 mill so I can save $3-$5 dollars per batch. It just used to not make sense for me justify the mill. It would take about 30 batches to break even.

However, I wasn't thinking about limitations of the mash tun and how a few pounds may make the difference with brewing a 1.070 10 gallons or not.

I only used the default mill gap. I'm contemplating adjusting the mill even tighter now to get a finer grind.

 

[924RACR]

I doubled up; got not only a new mill, but also a fancy new false bottom (to replace the bazooka tube we'd been using previously). Now clocking in at about 80%, give or take...

I think we could actually pull off a 10-gal batch of higher-gravity stuff, given our mash tun capacity! Wheee!!!

 

[LuiInIdaho]

The overall efficiency improvement was 7 points (68% w/ LHBS vs 75% with my new mill). I used to think it wasn't worth it because that equates to only a few pounds of grain. So I'm buying a $130 mill so I can save $3-$5 dollars per batch. It just used to not make sense for me justify the mill. It would take about 30 batches to break even.

However, I wasn't thinking about limitations of the mash tun and how a few pounds may make the difference with brewing a 1.070 10 gallons or not.

I only used the default mill gap. I'm contemplating adjusting the mill even tighter now to get a finer grind.

The real savings is being able to buy base grains in 50 o5 55 lb sacks and saving that way. You can't do this without having a mill.

Mark