How To Crush A Small Amount Of Grain

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Rod

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I purchased by mistake a kilo of light lager grain , uncrushed, which I plan to use in a light pilsener

Going to use dried light malt extract and some grain

but to the point

cannot return grain to exchange for crushed or get the HBS to mill

Can grind as follows

1) small amounts at a time in a coffee grinder in which I can adjust size , perculator to very fine

2) food processor

3) pasta maker with adjustable size

4) rolling pin :(

plan to steep 30 minutes @ 68 degrees in a bag on the stove top , remove bag and spent grain then add more water and dried malt extract and boil with hops


can I grind it very fine , and get better extraction

no squeezing , so minimal tannins
 
Food processor is probably going to be the best bet. Not the most consistent crush but nothing over the top and you wont be turning your husk into dust like with the coffee grinder.

I'd do it in 200g lots and pulse it several times until it looks relatively broken up. Even if you do have some untouched kernels your efficiency shouldn't be too poor.
 
can I grind it very fine , and get better extraction
As far as I'm aware, a finer grind won't give you better efficiency, you'll just end up with alot more trub (so potentially worse efficiency if it means you leave more in the pot)
 
suggest you do what you can to insulate the pot to keep the temp up. You're using a type of grain that requires a mash, so you may not get the same extraction from steeping like you can with specialty malts. I would increase the time to the full 60 min and keep the temp as close to 68 as you can, wrap towels around the pot etc.

Your extraction may not be brilliant due to the no-sparge, but since you're using extract you can always just keep an eye on the gravity and add more extract / water as necessary.

Something like this would be a good idea...

http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...showtopic=38674
 
Blenders that crush ice are wicked for milling grain. I put 400g in at a time and turn it to 3 (ice mode).

Takes about 10 seconds to smash 400g to smithereens.

I get 80% efficiency, no sparge. Wort goes crystal clear into the fermenter - no tannins, or any of the other bad things that people who don't use this method assume.

Plenty of commercial breweries mill their grain to a dust. You've drank beer made from super-fine milled grain.
 
I am surprised your HBS won't do it for you...... nevertheless, take a look at the map in my signature and see if there is anyone close to you someone close by might have a mill you could use. Obviously 1kg won't take long through a mill.
 
I am surprised your HBS won't do it for you...... nevertheless, take a look at the map in my signature and see if there is anyone close to you someone close by might have a mill you could use. Obviously 1kg won't take long through a mill.
+1 Exactly what I thought, a kilo of malt would only take 2 minutes through a mill even turn by hand
 
when i was brewing with kits and adding spec malts to beers i used to use a meat tenderiser (steel mallet hammer type thing). Actually worked pretty well.

Get a chopping board, and put 200g at a time in a ziplock bag and beat the shit out of it. Doesn't take long.
 
I used a coffee grinder during the early days when I BAIBed. So if your grain bag is fine (like voile) you will be fine. Just make sure to use finnings and that will help drop out the finer particles.
 
I used a coffee grinder during the early days when I BAIBed. So if your grain bag is fine (like voile) you will be fine. Just make sure to use finnings and that will help drop out the finer particles.

grain bag is voile

will give the coffee grinder ( maybe too small ) or the food processor ago this time ( depending on volume )

will weigh it out a go from there

thanks
 
I dont like coffee grinders or food processors for cracking malt, commercial brewers might crush very fine what they dont do is mill the husks to powder (unless they have a mash filter), my mill came from a small brewery (30 HL) and when I got it, it still had the setting marked on the adjuster for a single pass, at that setting using Australian Lager and then the same malt in a coffee grinder.
Fractioned up and you get something like this
The top left is before sieving, the top row came from fractioning the milled malt, bottom row from a 60 second burst in a coffee grinder, there was nothing retained on the 2mm mesh.
Thats going through a 2mm, 1mm and 0.5mm sieve set as you can see with the milled malt the two biggest piles are the >2mm and <0.5mm, lots of fines for efficiency and lots of big husk bits for good lautering.
Mark
View attachment 53789
 
Mark, a bit off topic because the OP is only doing a small quantity, but I know you have a BIAB "experimental" setup, have you tried the bottom row results in your photo for a BIAB brew?

My mill just produces "standard" crush such as you display on the top row of your photo so this question is just academic. However one thing I have noticed is that since trying to achieve something like Whale Ale, that you introduced me to, :chug: I have been regularly using fifty / fifty ale and wheat mashes.

I often read complaints that a lot of wheat can cause stuck mashes because wheat malt is huskless, and you might be advised to use rice hulls etc, but in the case of my BIAB brews I never have this problem - it drains as freely as an all barley malt brew.
 
Mostly I was replying to the assertion that breweries mill fine, which some do, and therefore its fine to use a food processor.
By highlighting there are fundamental differences between what happens in a food processor and what comes out of a mill. I can only hope that at some time a brewer who is trying to lauter will be saved a very slow and frustrating brew day.
Fine milled malt is not the same as pulverised malt, whether or not this will have much impact on a BIAB brewer is not really what I was concerned about.
Mark
 
Surely someone nearby has a mill and could do it for you.

I can do it down in sutho if you like, bit of a hike though.
 
4) rolling pin :(
Be a man!
220px-Lao_cuisine_khok.jpg
 
I wouldn't use a food processor to mill grain. They don't work well at all. Great for mixing cakes - but if you want to mill grains with a kitchen implement you already own the blender and the goffee grinder are the best options.
 
...but if you want to mill grains with a kitchen implement you already own the blender and the goffee grinder are the best options.

^^^^^... for BIAB...^^^^^


...grinders etc are shite if mashing with any other system... will tend to want to compact and the result is a stuck mash... (did for me in my partials a number of times)

If I was having to crush a small amount of grain it would totally be with the rolling pin... or the hammer option which I quite like the sound of...

Yob
 
^^^^^... for BIAB...^^^^^


...grinders etc are shite if mashing with any other system... will tend to want to compact and the result is a stuck mash... (did for me in my partials a number of times)

If I was having to crush a small amount of grain it would totally be with the rolling pin... or the hammer option which I quite like the sound of...

Yob

yeah the hammer/tenderiser is a good option Yob. Just make sure you do it in a ziplock or similar bag with the air pushed out, otherwise grain and shit will fly everywhere.

rolling pin not so good. It sounds like a good idea, but it's a crapload of hard work to crush with a rolling pin. The grain keeps getting moved around the table/chopping block and struggles to stay still so the pin struggles to roll over the top of it.
 
Ive used the zip lock and hammer method a few times, bit of technique needed as even with a rubber mallet its easy to split the bag, I keep the grain in the bag to a single layer, about 70g at a time for your standard bag, I find hammering in time to music works best, maybe not Slayer, but not Michael Bolton either, if you know what I mean
have also tried a Wizz Stick, its good way to spread grain to every corner of your kitchen
 

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