Feshly milled vs store milled: Will I really notice the difference?

[thisispants]

I'm getting more and more into this brewing caper and I'm just wondering if I'm really going to notice a difference by having my own mill and milling the grains fresh on the same day I brew?

At the moment I'm getting the store to mill it, and then I'm brewing about 4 days after it's milled. The grains are being kept in an air tight bag packaged at the store....

Am I really going to notice a difference if I mill it at home? Has anyone done a blind taste test? Would be interesting.

Basically..... should I bother getting a mill? At the moment I don't have a lot of cash to spend on brewing so I'm trying to get a burner and a larger pot first....should it be third on the list?

 

[michaeld16]

I dont reckon 4 days storage is gonna have a noticeable difference owning a mill allows you to buy grain in bulk though.

 

[Camo6]

After 4 days I wouldn't be able to notice the difference. Hell after 6 weeks my palate would probably be none the wiser.

As long as it's sealed and stored well it'll be fine.

A mill is beneficial when you want to save costs and buy grain in bulk. Or brew large quantities or have the flexibility to brew a recipe on demand.

I'd hold off on the mill and get your brewing system set up first. Then, if you fall into the rabbit hole (which you will) you can look into a mill and the thousand other bits you think you need.

 

[dr K]

I do not mill till my mash liquor is ready...but that may be extreme, none the less grain does lose its freshness fairly quickly after milling, I reckon think of it like milk (in which case your 4 days is fine). I see you are in the Canberra region, Canberra Brewers (best club in the known universe) have a loan grain mill, manual, kicking around, it is almost new and includes a hopper, are a member??

K

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

4 days will be OK

But once it is cracked it will start to absorb moisture and the enzymes start to do their work. The husk acts as a barrier, which is why you can store grain for a long time, years even

Fresh is always best.

You may not notice a flavour difference but you will see an eff% difference over time

If you get your grain pre milled it is best to get it vac sealed at the same time if your not using straight away. Not all HBS can do this

 

[Danscraftbeer]

I'm getting more and more into this brewing caper and I'm just wondering if I'm really going to notice a difference by having my own mill and milling the grains fresh on the same day I brew?

At the moment I'm getting the store to mill it, and then I'm brewing about 4 days after it's milled. The grains are being kept in an air tight bag packaged at the store....

Am I really going to notice a difference if I mill it at home? Has anyone done a blind taste test? Would be interesting.

Basically..... should I bother getting a mill? At the moment I don't have a lot of cash to spend on brewing so I'm trying to get a burner and a larger pot first....should it be third on the list?

Its too late your already in. I milled my own from the start of my all grain. I don't know anything else and you smell it etc you know it more, how it breaks up and all.

 

[Rocker1986]

I've also milled from the start of my AG "career". You won't notice any difference in the flavour of the beer from having them sit for 4 days, especially in an airtight (I'm guessing vacuum sealed?) bag. As others have noted, the advantage of your own mill is that you can buy grains in bulk and mill as you need it, which is why I went that route - but I also had the budget. Like dr K, I mill when the strike water is ready, or while it's heating up anyway.

 

[MHB]

I think there is a lot more to it than an either or
The quality of the mill will make a big difference, as will the quality of the milling, the type of bag used to store the grain...
My old shop mill (now at Brewman) had 175mm rollers and one thing that makes a big difference to the crack is the size of the rollers - the bigger the better - its called nip angle theory if you want to do some reading.
Another factor is how carefully you or the store treat the malt, not all malts crack the same, a good mill is easily adjustable and the operator will make adjustments to give an optimum crack on different malts/grains.
Again in my shop we packed all the malt in barrier bags, I did some tests on time to Iodine normal and malt cracked and stored for 6 months was the same as fresh cracked, so the bags and 4 days in them may not make any difference. If the store is just using normal polly bags I doubt 4 days would make much of a difference but weeks-months will as moisture and O2 will get in.
Mark

 

[Adr_0]

I think moisture plays a big part of it. If you are in dry, frosty, concretey areas like Canberra you probably have a lot more latitude. I bought a mill with a plan to buy it bulk, but ended up moving house/jobs and never saw it through. I like the romance of it, and generally buy grain uncracked because with a small child and working a lot of Saturdays, my plans get through out by many weeks or a month or two, not just the next week.

I think that if you're buying caramel or roasted grains that have been sitting in Qld humidity for weeks or months it's a very different story.

Park the mill for a few months and just stick to buying cracked grain and ironing out your processes. And if you're worried about efficiency, again - much bigger fish to fry than worrying about grain crack differences, and you can probably ask your grain supplier to crack a certain way if you are really fussed.

 

[real_beer]

When all grain brewing started to take off with home brewers most HBS used to charge a fee to crack grain for you, and anyone who has tried to crack 5kg of grain will tell you it was money well spent. As most home brewers in Australia are generally tight arses with their money they soon factored in the long term cost of investing in a grain mill would soon be offset by their 1000 to 2000 litre a year beer production. These days as most HBS crack grain for free or a very small charge this doesn't really apply any-more, however big savings are made by purchasing whole grain in bulk and milling it yourself.

One thing to consider especially if you eventually decide to go down a recirculating mash path is that they work best when grains aren't cracked as fine as for batch sparging and BIAB. So if you have your own mill you can adjust and fine tune it to suit your system giving you greater control of your efficiency level. If at some point your local HBS ever changes mills or changes the gap they mill at, it will have an effect on your system, it just depends at what level of brewing your at if it happened. If your drinking it yourself it wouldn't really matter, but if your putting in a 105% effort to win a competition you'd probably be pissed off and miffed, and when it started happening to all your beers you'd be pulling your hair out looking for where the problem was coming from. Say you'd recently modified your false bottom slightly by adding a few more holes to improve flow, where do you think you'd look to cast the blame first? You might end up tweaking all your recipes and getting the outcomes you want again without even realising the mill was the problem. I'd say most people who own a mill find the gap they're looking for to suit their setup and never touch it again unless forced too.

As for what equipment you should get just write down a complete list of every bit of brewing bling you'd have if you could, then sit down quietly by yourself and say over and over at least 500 times:
'I'm well and truly ******! For the rest of my life this hobby is going to have me buy things I want but can't justify". I'll have to use my employers work premise as a delivery point for my impulsive out of control on-line purchases that I'm going to have to sneak home past my wife/partner'. "When out shopping I'll see a filter screen where my wife/partner sees frying pan splatter guard, a grain mill instead of a pasta maker, a mash paddle instead of a giant spoon, a hop screen instead of a tea-leaf infuser, a single vessel brew pot instead of a stockpot, a malt-pipe instead of a stock pot, a filter plate instead of a pizza tray'. 'Even when I know I can't afford or justify buying what I want I'm going too get it anyway! 'I'm ****** ............ I'm ****** .......... I'm ****** .......... I'm well and truly ******!'

After you've finished incanting the above get your list out pick an item, any item and buy it. It doesn't matter which one you pick! Your going too buy them all eventually anyway because .................. yes that's right ...............you guessed it ...............YOU'RE ******!

Welcome to the club! :icon_cheers:

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

One thing to consider especially if you eventually decide to go down a recirculating mash path is that they work best when grains aren't cracked as fine as for batch sparging and BIAB. So if you have your own mill you can adjust and fine tune it to suit your system giving you greater control of your efficiency level.

Not always true.

Search for " grain wetting" or " grain conditioning " Basically you moisten the grains slightly so that when you crush you get mostly intact husks and nicely cracked kernels. You want to aim for about 25-30% flour in your crush. The intact husks make a big difference to sparging

http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/74542-wetting-grain-before-milling-vs-not-wetting-it/

But you will need to adjust mill to suit your system as all mills are different and all malts are different

 

[technobabble66]

+1 to grain wetting. Works surprisingly well.
Back to topic, you'd need/want to mash in fairly soon after grain wetting though - given you've just added a fair bit of moisture to the cracked grain.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

+1 to grain wetting. Works surprisingly well.
Back to topic, you'd need/want to mash in fairly soon after grain wetting though - given you've just added a fair bit of moisture to the cracked grain.

Pretty much imeadiatly. .

 

[mosto]

I have a 2nd hand mill I bought of a member on here. I used to buy 25kg base malt and mill it myself. Then one day my HBS only had 25kg bags that were already crushed. I wasn't sure about keeping that amount of crushed grain, but didn't have much option. Used it up over a couple of months any didn't notice any real difference flavour wise all the way through, so I buy it crushed all the time now, as that's one less job on brewday. Efficiency does suffer towards the end of the bag though.

 

[Hpal]

I've stored bags of grain cracked from MHB for 6 months plus with no ill effect whatsoever. However I now mill my own the day before and store it in an airtight bag.

 

[Nizmoose]

Like the OP I've started all grain getting the grain milled and gave done that for almost two years now. Haven't noticed an issue leaving a bag of milled grain for a week or so. Used to leave the bags in the fridge but stopped doing that in fear (probably irrational) of odour pick up. It's not vac sealed just airtight and last week I hit 90% efficiency for the first time on a bag that was milled over a week prior to brew day. Definitely invest in a burner and pot before a mill.

 

[lobedogg]

I get each batch pre-milled and normally pick up two bags at a time. Quite often, the second bag may not get brewed until up to a couple of weeks later. Have not noticed any discernible difference, or drop in efficiency. This has not stopped me telling my wife that "I need to brew to this batch today/tonight or my grain will go bad". Will have to think of another reason when I finally get around to getting my own mill...

 

[DU99]

i have some Silica Gel sachets i toss into my umilled speciality grain containers

 

[Matplat]

I think there is a lot more to it than an either or
The quality of the mill will make a big difference, as will the quality of the milling, the type of bag used to store the grain...
My old shop mill (now at Brewman) had 175mm rollers and one thing that makes a big difference to the crack is the size of the rollers - the bigger the better - its called nip angle theory if you want to do some reading.
Another factor is how carefully you or the store treat the malt, not all malts crack the same, a good mill is easily adjustable and the operator will make adjustments to give an optimum crack on different malts/grains.
Again in my shop we packed all the malt in barrier bags, I did some tests on time to Iodine normal and malt cracked and stored for 6 months was the same as fresh cracked, so the bags and 4 days in them may not make any difference. If the store is just using normal polly bags I doubt 4 days would make much of a difference but weeks-months will as moisture and O2 will get in.
Mark

:icon_offtopic: On your 175mm rollers, did you need to have them knurled?

I am building a mill with 140mm rollers, and am thinking it may not be required. Also I don't have a knurling tool and if I can get away without having to buy one it would obviously be preferential...

 

[Rocker1986]

I imagine the knurling helps grip the grains and pull them through the rollers more efficiently and easily so logic would suggest it is necessary, but maybe not. h34r: