A new mill sees the light

I finally finished my new malt mill with CrankAndStein rollers. Photos are on their way. In short I used tree small pieces of wood with some holes drilled in them. Crushing malt can be a tedious task. As a home brewer you can have it ground at the brew shop, or purchase a mill. If the malt supplier crushes the malt, then you are faced with using the grain in a short amount of time to insure freshness. I brew too little to be able to get all the grain used in due time. So the decision to purchase a mill and grind the malt at home was easy. The task can be made much more easy by putting a motor on it. I have seen many mills connected to a drill. The problem is that they burn out due to low torque. It is tough on the drill and shortens its useful life. With a good quality drill going for hundreds of dollars, it makes more sense to motorize the mill.

I already make decent beer, and the malt mill will probably not alter my brews in any noticeable direction. All the homebrew shops in Denmark, will supply pre-crushed grain, but you have to remember that freshness is the key to making good beer. The best part is that uncrushed grain is usually cheaper than pre-crushed. Crushing just before mashing also provide maximum freshness and you can adjust crush for maximum yield and lautering in your system.

Commercial brewers and many microbrewers have large mills that use multiple pairs of rollers to crush grain. After each step the grain can be run through a sieve that separates smaller particles to prevent them from being crushed again. Home mills usually only have the option between two three rollers, so I went for three with THE MONSTER.

The CrankAndStein rollers are connected to a gear and then to a motor. This motor is built to work hard at low RPMs. Now the hopper was dead easy; I just cut the bottom af at water cooler can, and it was finished.

If I knew that it was this easy to build it, I would have finished the project a year ago. :-)

A couple of links:
http://byo.com/
http://www.ipass.net/mpdixon/
http://sdcollins.home.mindspring.com
http://brewiki.org/