Chrushing your own grain

[Bryggmester]

I buy my malt ready crushed in 25 kilo sacks. I find it keeps for months and I get spared the hassle of crushing it myself. There is always the possibility that I would c... it up and I imagine it must be rather a messy business?

[tim]

Always get 25K crushed until I ordered 25K uncrushed by mistake! Did a bodge on crushing using a converted coffee mill powered with a drill - got reasonable results but it was really instructive in the sorts of variations you can get in efficiency - both under and over crushing!. HAve gone back to crushed, but there's big differences ((in my view) in quality of crush even from same supplier. I'd definately go for crushing myself if the mills (or at least the ones that look half decent) weren't so expensive!
T

[mysterio]

I'd definately go for crushing myself if the mills (or at least the ones that look half decent) weren't so expensive!

That's it for me too. There's always something much better the money can be spent on. You could probably get a new keg and a sack of grain for the price of a mill which won't save you any money, unless you started getting into importing pallets of grain or something.

[Boo Boo]

I crush my own due to the fact that I buy sacks of grain and don't feel that keeping crushed grain around for months on end is good for the freshness of the grain.
My buying grain bulk has saved me the cost of my porkert mill.

[BitterTed]

I crush my own.

[steve_flack]

I'd definately go for crushing myself if the mills (or at least the ones that look half decent) weren't so expensive!
T

I got the 'Barley Crusher' which is actually pretty reasonably priced - even with shipping from the US. The cheapest option comes fully assembled with a 7lb hopper for $154 including surface shipping - with airmail it's $169. Cetainly a lot cheaper than the UK shops want for a MaltMill!

http://www.barleycrusher.com/

[Western Brewer]

Which homebrewer's gonna be first with the 30lb hopper version then.

[steve_flack]

I've got the 15...

[Western Brewer]

Which homebrewer's gonna be first with the 30lb hopper version then.

[BitterTed]

Which homebrewer's gonna be first with the 30lb hopper version then.

I have the MaltMill and a friend of mine made a hopper for me that holds about 20 lb of grain!

[Chappie519]

Occasionaly i cant get crushed wheat from the homebrew shop here so i went and bought a hand turned coffee grinder which seams to do the trick as i only need to do a small amount. Im not sure if it would be very easy to do for say 4kg of pale malt but certainly for the odd 500g its fine. I get good results with the brews i have used it for.

[NzDan1]

Ive had a barley crusher for a few months now and its an invaluable tool in my brewing, as I can select a brew from my bin of specialties on a whim and mill 5kg in under 2 minutes!

[Scooby]

If 1 mill = £80 and the difference between 25kg whole and crushed is £2.50
and you use 3 bags a year it's only going to take 10 years to payback So you crush your own for many reasons but not to save money

[steve_flack]

I crush my own because

a) I buy in bulk and uncrushed keeps better
b) I've had some really poor crushes from homebrew shops leading to rubbish extraction efficiencies
c) I'm fat and I need the exercise.

[NzDan1]

If 1 mill = £80 and the difference between 25kg whole and crushed is £2.50
and you use 3 bags a year it's only going to take 10 years to payback So you crush your own for many reasons but not to save money

I crush my own to save money and to have control of what I want when I want it! I got a 25kg bag of Maris otter last week for $65NZD, theres only 10kg left in under a week, therefore for the likes of myself it does pay off, I guess it depends on how much you want to brew and how you do it! for instance, I got rained off work today, the boss called me this morning and said no work today! Yippee!,
Within 10 minutes I had my water on heat and my grains milled, the most time consuming part was deciding what grain and hop bill I would run with, mash was on within half an hour! (if only it would rain everyday)