Flour Mill For Crushing Grain

shop deals on amazon
Advertise with us
inkbird
gas guyz
Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
A

Arghonaut

Well-Known Member
Joined
15/3/10
Messages
286
Reaction score
20
Location
Mid North Coast NSW
My old man just ordered one of these flour mills:

http://www.skippygrainmills.com.au/electric/billy100.htm

Wondering if anyone has ever used one for grinding grain for brewing? Havent invested in a mill yet, and if i can get away with using this it will save me ordering pre crushed grain. Says it is adjustable..... i BIAB so can get away with a fairly fine crush.....

Will run a handful of test grain through when it arrives i and see how i go.
 
Wow, that's exxy!

I've been trying to squirrel away some $$$ for one of these bad boys (adjustable as well)

Wondermill

Looking forward to seeing your results though!!
 
Start from the result you want to achieve and work backwards to the machine that can do it for you.

Steve
 
This is sort of what you should be aiming for. You can probably get away with a lot more with a BIAB system but this crush is for a three vessel brewery.
.

IMG_1733.JPG
 
As above.

You can crush finer for BIAB but in that case, you can probably get away with a much cheaper cracker/grinder. If spending that much, you can buy something top of the range that's built for purpose.

At best, find out what range it's capable of cracking - if it can do coarse as well as fine, it might be a great piece of machinery. I get cracked grain like the picture above from a corona I paid a bit more than $50 for but I have to work for it (hand operated)
 
We have one of the Schnitzer mills from Skippy and even on the coarsest crush, I wouldn't use it for BIAB (and I'm a BIAB'er). It's not a fine crush, it's coarse flour. Your brand is different, so maybe your results will be as well.

I will say, however, that freshly crushed flour in your bread is amazing. My wife makes all of our bread. Sometimes if she doesn't have time, she'll use pre-milled flour instead and I can tell by the smell coming from the oven. The loaves with the home-milled flour have an amazing toasty, husky aroma.

If you can use your old man's mill for brewing, it's a bonus. If not, just eat heaps of his bread!
 
Malty Cultural said:
If you can use your old man's mill for brewing, it's a bonus. If not, just eat heaps of his bread!
Click to expand...

Yeah thats what i was thinking!

He picks it up today, will try and run some grain through it this weekend.

It does say the milling stones are "infinitely adjustable", so if it wont give me a coarse crush, i will try using it to break the space time continuum instead.
 
I BIAB and my crush is very similar to that one above. I don't feel the need to crush any finer as it just seems to become trub at the end anyway. I use a marga mill running off a two speed drill that i can run nice and slow. 1mm gap and i don't get much flour at all.

$139 from craftbrewer and $79 for the drill makes a pretty cheap motorised mill!
 
If your dad is getting a up market flour mill, I would give it a go. I believe the stone mills don't open up wide enough for what we need. Not sure with those better mills if your dad would like you drilling out the adjustment for your needs.

A Monster mill mm2 is $117 + $51 post. The post can be halved if you find someone who also wants one and buy the 2 together, so $25.50 each. $142.50 for a mill built for milling grains that should outlast your brewing career, and then be on-sold for a good return.
 
Marga mills tend to get sneered at, but if set up properly they are fantastic. I bought a new one recently from CB and a good hi-torque corded drill from Bunnings for around $90. Don't bother with a little cordless thing, waste of money.

Then I got the Marga hand-crank handle straightened out at a local mechanics and cut off to provide a sort of drill bit that just stays in the drill chuck all the time.

I drilled a hole in the "guide wheel" to give a good crush for BIAB. I fitted a hopper identical to the one shown on the CB site for the Marga. I clamp the mill to a plank that juts out from a workbench a bit like a pirate walking the plank setup over a big washing bowl, insert the "drill bit" and turn on, grain whooshes through and just falls into the big bowl.

Now I can run a typical grain bill through in about 4 minutes and know that with the robust construction of the mill and the heavy duty drill I'll get years of service for an outlay of around $240. I've seen MMs in action and reckon the Marga holds its own any day. Problem with a lot of them is that people have done el cheapo mods like dynabolts, cheap pissy little drills etc and ended up with very frustrating milling sessions. Been there myself with the previous mill.
 
For BIAB, a cheap coffee grinder will do...so I hear.

That'll probably be my next purchase.
 
For around $189.00 you can get a PROPER grain mill including base plate and hopper, why go for anything else. As far as the Marga mills go, that was my first grain mill and it was great at the time, but only because nothing else was available. The knurl on the rollers is very shallow and wears very quickly, it's not a patch on the mills available now. There are so many more better options now and not nearly as pricey to finally get set up, they are ready to go out of the box.

Andrew
 
bum said:
Because he said he wants to make flour as well.
Click to expand...

He also said he wants to crush grains for beer, I can also make coarse flour from my grain mill if I wanted.

EDIT: Actually the OP says nothing about wanting to make flour as well.
 

Similar threads

R
Milling Grain
2
Replies
20
Views
6K
Brewman_
Brewman_
big78sam
Equipment For Sale (Melb/Sunbury) Complete All Grain BIAB brewing and kegging set up
Replies
1
Views
2K
big78sam
big78sam
Z
Goodaye from a newbie
Replies
7
Views
1K
Zekamaboy
Z
big78sam
Equipment For Sale (MELB) Brewing set up - What's it worth?
Replies
4
Views
2K
DJ_L3ThAL
DJ_L3ThAL
S
Equipment For Sale [SYD] 30 cm Stainless door mounted drip tray for sale & corona mill
Replies
0
Views
849
samwakeling
S

Latest posts

Back
Top