BB Ale malt - inconsistent size grains?

[thermo_47]

Looking at the position of the direction lever on the drill, I think the rollers are running in reverse

Surely I can't have made a mistake that stupid... can I? The drill is upside down (obviously). I'm 90% sure the rollers drive in towards each other... that's correct, right?! :unsure:

 

[thermo_47]

Alright, a bit of rough, dodgy iphone footage to try and help solve this mystery...

http://youtu.be/l0hafIsfbzk

 

[tavas]

Are you able to lift the hopper slightly off the rollers? Maybe use a couple of washers?

 

[QldKev]

Surely I can't have made a mistake that stupid... can I? The drill is upside down (obviously). I'm 90% sure the rollers drive in towards each other... that's correct, right?! :unsure:

As long as the top of the rollers are heading towards each other. I also thought maybe the rollers were clogged with gunk, but they look perfectly clean. Watching your video I can't see what is wrong. I think someone will need to check it out in person. Where did you get the mill from, how far are they to take it in and show them it running.

 

[JaseH]

Looks to me like maybe the speed is way too high? What happens if you go really slow - like hand crank speed?

 

[bradsbrew]

Try the drill in reverse and see if you get anything, that's all I can offer sorry.

 

[Sam England]

I had the same issue with my home made mill. I now "condition"my grain and it rips through the mill with a beautiful crush on 0.9mm and virtually zero flour. The husks stay together a hell of a lot better as well. I mix about half a cup of water thoroughly through the grain (6kg), leave it 10 mins while I set up and then mill. The grain initially will just stick to your hands when squeezed in your fist, but after the 10mins it won't stick at all. My rollers are mild steel and I don't have any issues with corrosion. Give it a burl with a handful of grain and see how you go. I often don't condition the crystal grains as they tend to stick to the rollers a bit. Just mix them through with the conditioned lot as you begin milling. There's a few posts on here about it if you want to give it a go.
Cheers,
BB

 

[thermo_47]

I had the same issue with my home made mill. I now "condition"my grain and it rips through the mill with a beautiful crush on 0.9mm and virtually zero flour. The husks stay together a hell of a lot better as well. I mix about half a cup of water thoroughly through the grain (6kg), leave it 10 mins while I set up and then mill. The grain initially will just stick to your hands when squeezed in your fist, but after the 10mins it won't stick at all. My rollers are mild steel and I don't have any issues with corrosion. Give it a burl with a handful of grain and see how you go. I often don't condition the crystal grains as they tend to stick to the rollers a bit. Just mix them through with the conditioned lot as you begin milling. There's a few posts on here about it if you want to give it a go.
Cheers,
BB

Thanks BB, I'll give that a go. Just weird how it doesn't happen others with the same mill/setup. Grain conditioning it is!

As long as the top of the rollers are heading towards each other. I also thought maybe the rollers were clogged with gunk, but they look perfectly clean. Watching your video I can't see what is wrong. I think someone will need to check it out in person. Where did you get the mill from, how far are they to take it in and show them it running.

Kev I got the mill and hopper from Ross at Craftbrewer. I'll have a chat to him and see what he reckons.

My other running theory is that there's not enough weight of grain to "push" it down between the rollers - not enough downward force. When I apply that downward force manually, it flies through. I've considered building a larger hopper anyway, to hold a full 15-20kg grain bill, so I might try this and see how we go. Alternatively my crazy ideas include putting some sort of board on top of the grain in the hopper (would have to be straight sided) and throw a few weights on top for more downwards pressure!

Cheers everyone for your thoughts anyway Great to have the knowledge and support of a whole community of brewers on your side!

 

[Crusty]

Looks to me like maybe the speed is way too high? What happens if you go really slow - like hand crank speed?

I think it's cranking way too fast as well.
I am using the MiniMill with the Ozito drill & it churns through the grain like there's no tomorrow.
I'm crushing at about half that speed.

 

[thermo_47]

I think it's cranking way too fast as well.
I am using the MiniMill with the Ozito drill & it churns through the grain like there's no tomorrow.
I'm crushing at about half that speed.

Thanks Crusty. I'll have another crack when I get home, but I still can't see how a slower speed could greatly increase the speed of grain moving through? It might help for consistency etc, but my experiments point more towards speed of drill = speed grain moves...?

 

[JaseH]

Thanks Crusty. I'll have another crack when I get home, but I still can't see how a slower speed could greatly increase the speed of grain moving through? It might help for consistency etc, but my experiments point more towards speed of drill = speed grain moves...?

That mill doesn't have very aggressive knurling on the rollers to grab the grain, it looks to me like the rollers are moving that quick that the grains are just skipping off and bouncing around instead of being drawn in. Could be totally wrong but worth going real slow and see if they are drawn into the gap better - easy to test.

I run mine at least half that speed with my cordless drill and can get through 9kg in about 5min.

 

[QldKev]

Decided to crush some grain ready for my next brew. I recorded the crush to give you an idea of what it should look like. My mill is a Monster Mill MM2 so it's not a geared one, which in theory makes the feed not as good as a geared one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5My_rWs3kE&feature=youtu.be


And this is the crush from that batch.

 

[niftinev]

Alright, a bit of rough, dodgy iphone footage to try and help solve this mystery...

http://youtu.be/l0hafIsfbzk

Jon

I've got the same mill and crank mine by hand (need the exercise), about 6kg/5-10mins and don't have any issues with my grind.

Looking at your vid. I think your running way too fast and the grain is just bouncing on the rollers and not being dragged through.

Just slow your speed right down

 

[thermo_47]

I took this down to 0.9mm as others are doing and put 1kg of BB ale malt in the hopper, set my drill speed to the slowest setting and wound it up until grain started feeding through. 14 clicks, for reference.

So I cranked my mill back up to 1.2mm. Another 1kg of BB Ale malt. Same slow-as-possible drill speed (this time 12 clicks).

Thanks all - seems like the consensus is the speed. As I mentioned above, my tests were at the slowest the my drill would kick the mill into action while it had a hopper full of grain. When I get to it, I'll experiment with starting the drill up even slower and dropping grain in gradually. Maybe because of the width of the rollers receiving grain compared to smaller openings like QLDKev's video, it's a harder load on the drill and therefore requires more speed to crush. I might also experiment with blocking off the edges at the bottom of the hopper to see how that changes things.

Will report with progress by tomorrow. Really appreciate everyone's feedback!

 

[QldKev]

On mine you can see I had a bigger opening, but found when crushing wheat it would sound like it was working hard so I closed it up. You can see how it still really rips through the grain pretty quickly.

 

[Pat Casey]

Very interesting. Sorry I can't offer any solution or explanation, just an observation. I have always found the BB base malts - Galaxy, Pale and Ale, are consistenly far messier to mill than any other malts. The barley variety for both JW Trad Ale and BB Ale is the same, Gairdner. I can't see any obvious differences in the certificates of analysis except that the BB ale has a slightly higher moisture content, ranging 4 to 4.5 % as opposed to 3.8 to 4% for the JW ale. I doubt whether that would explain anything as the JW pilsner has a moisture content of about 4.5%.

If the mill and its speed are the culprit you would expect similar problems with all malts. Try some Joe White next time and see what happens.

Pat