Biab Grain Crush

[mikelinz]

Hi guys

Just brought a Monster Mill MM2. It comes set at .045". I've read that you can have ba finer crush for biab, so two questions.

What should I set the gap to? (ort should ijust use the ststed .038-,040 for a fine crush)
Do I make any adjustnment to the grain if I go for a fine crush.

rgds mike

 

[Sunshine_Brewer]

Hi guys

Just brought a Monster Mill MM2. It comes set at .045". I've read that you can have ba finer crush for biab, so two questions.

What should I set the gap to? (ort should ijust use the ststed .038-,040 for a fine crush)
Do I make any adjustnment to the grain if I go for a fine crush.

rgds mike

I don't BIAB but my monster is set at 90mm, try different crushes and use what's best for you.

 

[notung]

From what I've been led to believe, you can crush pretty much down to flour. I don't go that far, but nearly! I use a marga mill, which does inflict a bit of husk-tearing on the grain. But since I now BIAB and therefore do not sparge... WHO CARES!

Attached is a photo of the crush from my 1st BIAB effort. Since then I have been trying to crush much finer to increase my efficiency as much as possible. Hope this helps in some way.

 

[seemax]

I crush my grain with an insinkerator (yes really). It spits out lots of flour... but I do BIAB in an esky and have no trouble. It does take a bit to drain the last bit of runnings from the bag though. Haven't noticed any obvious astringencies so far.

Try a few different settings and see how it effects your flow rates and efficiency.

 

[Bribie G]

Last year Ross put a couple of batches of my grain through the mill twice to see if it would make any difference, no apparent benefit IMHO.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

The main thing crush is going to do is change your efficiency and perhaps the speed with which your mash converts.. mostly efficiency.

Just crush on the standard setting, see how it works. If you get good efficiency then no need to change. You can, and it might help your efficiency, but it will be a trial and error thing to get to the point of diminishing returns. You get more flour into your bag, more gets into the kettle, you get more trub and lose more wort to trub... there will be a turnaround point.

But - although I wouldn't aim for flour. The nice thing about BIAB is that its gonna be pretty hard to crush too fine unless you go seriously silly.

No adjustments to grain for differing crush - except if and when it changes your efficiency. Then of course you need to change the amount of grain you use for a given recipe.

 

[Nick JD]

My coffee grinder makes flour ... kernel flour, germ flour, husk flour, weevil flour. It's basically flour-city.

No adverse affects. I think 64 degrees might be a bit low to pull astringent chemicals from the husks, but that's a guess.

 

[manticle]

How many kilos do you crush for each brew Nick?

When I first started doing specs and partials I tried a coffee grinder but they only take a small amount of grain. I found even grinding 1 kg to be a super pain - now my grain bills are in excess of 6 kg most of the time. I know you have a tendency to do smaller batches and maybe your grinder is a decent size.

That said I seem to cope with grinding it all by hand 1 kg at a time.

 

[QldKev]

Hi guys

Just brought a Monster Mill MM2. It comes set at .045". I've read that you can have ba finer crush for biab, so two questions.

What should I set the gap to? (ort should ijust use the ststed .038-,040 for a fine crush)
Do I make any adjustnment to the grain if I go for a fine crush.

rgds mike

I think most brewers are using between 0.9mm and 1.0mm

I don't BIAB but my monster is set at 90mm, try different crushes and use what's best for you.

Did you mean 0.9mm?


I'm going to try 0.9mm for the next time I use Gregs 3v. For BIAB I think 0.9mm would also be about perfect.

QldKev

 

[matt white]

I BIAB and use a monster mill and have it set at 0.041". Seems to do the trick. I dont change the gap at all for wheat, rice etc. Efficiency is usually around the 70% mark.

 

[Nick JD]

3kg per brew. It takes about 2 minutes per kg. I do it while the strike water is heating up.

If I was doing 6kg batches ... the poor wee thing would probably cark. It gets pretty hot after 3 kg!