Grain Mill Purchased!

Finally, the funds were found to buy a grain mill so I can crush my malt at home. Yay!

I posted a quick poll a few months ago to ask the fine readers of this blog if I should buy a refractometer or a mill. The votes were in favor of purchasing the mill.

I will buy the refractometer at some point but now that I have this new toy, I will too busy to think about what to buy next.

Of all the choices out there, the Barley Crusher was in my price range and appeared to fit all my needs.

It was delivered in two pieces. The base and the roller were intact as one piece, and the hopper to hold the grain was the other piece. With a few turns of a bolt, the hopper was tightened in place to the base. I don’t foresee taking the hopper off at any time in the future, but it is handy that it can come apart for storage.

The piece of paper with the instructions on how to use the Barley Crusher were pretty awful. It was definitely a photo copy of a photo copy. The print was pretty “noisy” and hard to read. They should rewrite the instructions in a Word document and print them out. There’s no need to have instructions of that quality being sent out with your product.

Before I hooked the mill up to my power drill, I did take it for a spin with the hand crank. That was fun for a few minutes but only for a few minutes.

So this was a good test run. Thanks again to Mike for donating his years-old grains for the inaugural run. The birds and the squirrels should be having a feast on the milled malt that I put out there last night once I was done.

Now, the big questions are:

Will I need to adjust the mill settings?

I will have to calculate my efficiency during my next brew session. There’s a dunkelweizen that is just waiting to be brewed. Now that I have a mill, I can get going with it.

Will the mill improve my beer?

It should be fresher, in theory. The only way to learn is to do. We’ll see and let you know.

Brew On.