homebrewandbeer.com

Hi All,

Am considering buying a grain Mill,

any suggestions about what to look at / what to avoid ?

Cheers,
Chris, WA

I've got a marga and have been using it for 2 years.

No plans to upgrade it. If it aint broke.......

cool

just ordered one,

thanks again Doc...

Maybe I'm too late, but I'm very happy with my MillMaster.

It enables me to hand mill 5 kg of grain in 5 to 6 minutes.

sorry Warra, yep too late,

thanks for the input...


because I cant get crushed grain locally, its a pain, and I want to buy 25Kg bags whenever I'm in Perth...


thanks again,
Chris...

A 10mm spade drill bit and a cordless drill make life easier with the marga.....

As does a hopper made from a stormwater diverter box - Link

EDIT - my mill has had the bottom drilled out and is mounted on a piece of wood. This picture gives you and idea. The bucket to the left is what it sits on while i am milling. This was taken before i bought the spade drill bit.

as soon as mine gets here, i'll be automationg it somehow with a drill

will post some info if it works out...

Ivé been using a marga & I hate it. but it did get me started & it does do the job.....Sort of.

I only bought it because the Millmasters were not available at the time.

If you drill & tap a hole in the middle of the adjusting knob & insert a screw in it, you can pull the centre out & then remove the knob to drill two more holes in it for further adjustment, allowing a bigger gap between the rollers to get a proper "crack" instead of being ground.

Even with modified gap settings (two sizes up) & a power drill driving it, it is slow, labour intensive & produces more flour than I would like.
I still yearn for a fully automated system....... pour in 5Kg's of grain & press the GO button, then move on to heating up strike water.

That is why I have designed & 3D drafted my own mill from 3" dai, rollers, I have the gear to make the whole thing at home, including the spur gears & chutework, All Aluminium & S/S construction with Cast Iron gears & a 3 phase motor to drive it. At present I'm waiting on The 16mm Aluminium plate for the main body & She's getting close to being a goer.

How can I attach a PDF dwg here??

Cheers, Mick.

Marga works fine for me. It was already adjusted when i bought it from a fellow brewer who upgraded to one of the bigger and more expensive units.

With a drill i can get 5kg of grain through in 5 mins. Flour is good as long as you also have plenty of the grain husks in large pieces to provide an adequate filter. I have seen people who have mounted the drill so that it is effectively automated. I have no problem standing there for 5 mins and i am one of the laziest brewers going around.

I will admit the new shiny mills people are spruiking are porn and would work much better than my workhorse but i have lots of things i would rather spend my money on.

Mick - you cant attach files of any description. If you upload it to a file sharing website or change it to an image and use one of the image hosting sites you can share your design.

sounds like i'll be doing some mods when it gets here hey ?

what gap should i make it, 45 - 50 thou ?

cheers,
chris

Never measured the gap on mine and as i said, i bought it 2nd hand already modified.

The place you bought it from should be able to answer that question.

Grog wrote:what gap should i make it, 45 - 50 thou ?

cheers,
chris

I've got my MM set at 0.9mm and get a lot of flour and the occasional stuck sparge.
I'm going to open it up more and see how I go.

from reading around the place, seems 45 - 50 thou is around the right gap, but experience i guess is the best judge.

1.27mm is 50 thou (thousandths of an inch).

0.9mm is about 36 thou.
sounds like your 0.9mm might be a bit tight.

as a gauge, I just checked, and a CD disc is 1.2mm thick (47 thou) ...

so you can finally make use of that old Sex Pistols CD, and use it as a gauge to set up your mill


cheers, Chris

With regards to the thickness of a CD - they vary. Between manufactures, age & quality.

So they're not really a replacement for feeler gauges.

Rob.

My gap is set between 1and 1.1 mm, depending just where the rollers are positioned when I measure it.
As I hand crank mine, I get a perfect mix of cracked grain, with a little flour. Hand cranking is, I think, also kinder on the husks, as the speed is too slow for them to get torn.

I have no trouble achieving over 90% mash efficiency. Can't ask for more than that.

Has anyone tried the mill master mkII yet?

warra48 wrote:My gap is set between 1and 1.1 mm, depending just where the rollers are positioned when I measure it.
As I hand crank mine, I get a perfect mix of cracked grain, with a little flour. Hand cranking is, I think, also kinder on the husks, as the speed is too slow for them to get torn.

I have no trouble achieving over 90% mash efficiency. Can't ask for more than that.

I think I'll open mine up to 1.1mm Warra.

I'm a hand cranker too. Only takes about 5 minutes to get through 4.5 to 5kgs of grain.
Gotta change arms though or you could end up like Quagmire after he discovered internet porn.

now thats funny

HOORAYYYYY for the damn internet ...

Just found out that the mongrels I bought my grain mill from for 156 bucks on my credit card, are damn scammers.

There name is Kitchen Discounts, and steer well clear of them,

so now I'm looking for another grain mill

will just spend the extra bucks, and see Roy at TWOC...

Are you sure, they look legit to me. Even have a phone number - have you tried ringing them?