Milling grains

[Wolfman1]

Hi, I'm about to embark on my first time steeping grains and I'm guessing I need to mill them somehow.
The coopers website talks about putting them into a zip lock bag and bashing them with a rolling pin.

How crushed up do they need to be? John palmer talks about the finer they are crushed, the easier it is to extract the malty goodness

Is it worth putting them through a blender to mill them to a finer level?
Cheers

 

[mrsupraboy]

To fine of a crush gives tannins. Listen to the brew strong episode about mashing. It explains the crush a tiny bit.

 

[ekul]

most home brew shops will mill the grain for you too. If it were me i'd just get them to do it.

 

[pk.sax]

What grain are you steeping?

If it's crystal of some sort (caramelly dark sort of grain) it should be fairly easy to bash up. Mortar/pestle will do it, the grain is quite brittle.

If it's base malts like pilsner, Munich, Vienna or something go ahead and blitz it. As long as you aren't using tons of it as steeping grain (I'm assuming you are getting most of your fermentables from a kit or extract).

 

[Wolfman1]

Thanks all

It's 300g of crystal, with a can of lme and a coopers dark tin.
My lhbs is pretty rudimentary and it's brew night tomorrow, so I'll see what I can do with the mortar and pestle.

It came from coopers in one of their kits.

As an aside, the bag that came shipped with the can split in transit and filled the box with grain, and I'm assuming left a trail of grain from the front door to the gate and into the posties wagon. Cooper replaced it for me, but I've recovered probably 200g of grain. Is it worth using this in another brew or is it likely to be too dirty? If I'm boiling it in the mash for 30 mins after steeping with a bag it should kill any nasties that are likely to be there. Is this taking cheapness too far?

 

[pk.sax]

As long as you aren't putting mud in your brew...

btw, you don't boil a mash. In fact, you aren't 'mashing' anything. Steeping is done mainly with crystal grains because the malster has converted the starch to sugars inside the grain. So the mash is unnecessary.

I'm sounding wiser than I am, just read up more before throwing words around, understand what you're doing mate.

 

[manson81]

200g of crystal is probably worth less than a buck, but hey, if you have gathered it up, wash the dust off and steep away. We're all tight arses here.

 

[mrsupraboy]

No one has ask yet but are u sure there not already milled

 

[Not For Horses]

To fine of a crush gives tannins.

This is a bit of a mountain out of a mole hill situation.

A finer crush will aid in the extraction of tannins however, the science (Journal of the Institute of Brewing for example) suggests that this is fairly negligible.
Sure, if you crush your malt to a fine dust then you will end up with more tannin but if you do that then you have way bigger problems to sort out before you start thinking about tannins.

Tannin extraction is almost entirely a function of temperature and pH as well as time.

As far as steeping goes, as long as you are not steeping a fine malt flour in boiling water for an extended period of time, you shouldn't have issues with tannin extraction.

 

[pat86]

You mentioned blending them, which is quite different from milling. In terms of using non-mills, I know that a few years ago people like NickJD here compared small coffee / spice grinders vs. processors / blenders and the feedback was that small grinders were OK but things like food processors not so much. It was to do with the blades tearing apart the grain in an uneven fashion if I remember, you don't want a pile of un-cracked grains while the other half is flour.

 

[tiprya]

As general advice, that's fine. But there's nothing at all you can do to 300g of crystal to cause a brew-destroying extraction of tannins.

Go for your life with what whatever is easiest or closest: food processer, spice grinder, mortar and pestle, rolling pin, etc.