Grain Mill Recommendations

[miss_thenorth]

I realize this topic has been covered, but can you guys just humour me a bit? I am considering a grain mill. i know there are alot of peeps here who grind their own grain. Can you all tell me what kind of mill you have, what you like about it, what you don't like about it, what you might think would be better.

I bake alot. (2-3 times a week, minimum). I will probably also be grinding other types of grains, since I am GF. Spending the least amount of money for the best mill would be the best scenario.(but if I had to put a $ limit, probably no more than $200-300)
Now, I know vitamix's can grind, and I have been tossing around gettingone of those, butwhat do the experts say? (that's you guys )

 

[BarredBuff]

Well I just got my grinder and its the berries. I dont have a formal setup right now. Its in the garage on the concrete but I grind on it in the floor. Try flea markets. My dad found a grain mill that goes for 400 dollars on Ebay. This one was 108 dollars. Its an antique and very sturdy. I will get a pic tommorow. It grinds BOSS, Corn and pellets.

 

[freemotion]

I ground in my VitaMix for a couple of years and found it to be really convenient and so much better than any flour I could by....I'd been buying pastry and bread flours (whole wheat) at Whole Foods in the bulk section and this was SO much better.

Then I got an All-Grain Flour Mill off craigslist for $60 (I think) and it has some issues (my dad says something is "gone" in the motor but I can keep it working, maybe indefinitely, by hand turning the motor a bit whenever it gets stuck and won't work. He is right. I have to take it apart to do so, which is a pain, but it doesn't happen too often) but it makes the finest, most amazing flour, and it does not heat the flour like the VitaMix so it keeps longer. I make it ahead and keep it for maybe 2-4 weeks.

I can't do kamut in it because it has too much moisture...at least the batch of kamut I have does, so I do it in the VitaMix.

The VitaMix is a wonderful machine and can be used for amazing smoothies as it will pulverize a raw carrot in seconds flat. I got the other mill to save on my VitaMix's motor, since we use it so much. I like the flour from my new/old mill better. Either machine would cost a small fortune to replace, so I am glad to have both. The All-Grain mill, new, is $625. I've seen them on Ebay when researching them before buying. They tend to go for $125-250 or so. I was fortunate to run into someone who was doing an attic clean-out for a relative and just wanted to sell a bunch of stuff fast.

 

[ORChick]

I got the Family Grain Mill earlier this year - http://www.pleasanthillgrain.com/family_grain_mills.aspx - I really didn't want to spend a lot of money because my DH is picky, and I wasn't at all sure how he would deal with too much whole grain. I was told that this one requires two grinds (through once, and then again) to get fine flour, but I took the chance. Well ... I am very pleased with it. I can get fine flour, with one grinding, and also make it coarser as needed, up to cracked grains. The taste is fantastic - I would not have believed the difference between store bought and fresh ground. Even picky DH is able to handle more of the fresh ground. I did spend the extra money for an adapter to run this off my Kitchenaid, and rather wish I had saved my money. The directions say not to stop and start with grain in the mill - and the two times I have used it with the Kitchenaid it has jammed, and I have had to take everything apart (not difficult, but annoying), and start again with the mill empty. (Both times were with soaked and dried grain, so perhaps there was still too much moisture). At any rate, I tend now just to do it by hand - it takes about 5-6 minutes to make a fine flour from one cup of grain. But thats OK - kind of like weeding, I just let my mind go off on other subjects. And with hand grinding it doesn't matter if one starts and stops, so I can do it between doing other things. I think that had I known before buying it that we would like the results as well as we do I might have gone for a more expensive (read: easier/faster grinding) model, but I have to say that I am actually very pleased with this one, and can recommend it without reservation. The only caveat is that they do not recommend that one grind popcorn, but I think that many grinders aren't able for that, and really, why would I want to? Cornmeal is made from a different kind of corn.
We were talking about this just this evening; my DH tends to poo-poo my SS efforts (when talking with me), but this evening we were at my brother's for dinner, and he was saying how nice the fresh bread from the home ground flour was. And my brother said: "5-6 minutes? That's not much, compared to hand grinding coffee!"

 

[miss_thenorth]

Free, what else do you use your vitamix for? I have thought about getting one before, but not sure whether I can justify it for for smoothies, and now for grinding grain into flour.
Orchick, what wattage is your kitchenaid? Mine is 550, do you thinkt he attachment might wrok on mine? I have seen the Family Grain mill at Berry Hill (which looks like a canadian version of your Pleasanthill)

I know there are others here who grind also, I would love to hear from them.

(I got Christmas money thanks to my wonderful mil, --I already ordered a microscope, a steam canner, now this is the last thing I want., but I want to spend my money wisely)

 

[freemotion]

In the summer, if it is hot, I have trouble eating enough good food, so the VitaMix has been so wonderful. DH gets a lot more veggies this way, too. For us, it is not a smoothie treat, it is a smoothie meal. I will have a cold smoothie often twice a day in the summer. You can put things like raw carrots and spinach in the VitaMix along with some berries and kefir and have an absolutely delicious and SMOOOOOOTH smoothie that you cannot do with any other machine that I know of! No need to peel apples, etc. Add a couple of fresh, raw eggs and you have a satisfying meal. It actually crushes the cells of the foods and makes them more digestible and the nutrients more available, especially for someone with a compromised digestive system (me.) It allows you to retain all of the fiber. It is amazingly delicious, too!

We use it for everything else you would use a blender for, too.

I like making a cornbread recipe where you put the wheat and the corn right in the machine and make the batter that way. That was my very first grain-grinding attempt, a cornbread made from grains from my feed bins!

Oh, and you can use popcorn for cornmeal, although it is not the type used commercially, it comes out just fine. It is the only organic corn I can get here. I'm growing my own for meal this year, hopefully.

 

[ORChick]

miss_thenorth, my Kitchenaid is 325w, maybe that was my problem .

free, I know one can make corn flour from popcorn, I was just saying that it isn't recommended for many mills. And, as I have access to flour corn, I don't need to use popcorn.

 

[freemotion]

Oh, I didn't know it wasn't recommended for many mills! I wonder if it makes a difference in my mill? Haven't tried it, but I've ground feed corn in it to clean the stones. It took quite a bit of feed to de-glaze the stones after I put kamut through it. Oh, wait, they recommended using popcorn to de-glaze, and I put feed corn instead as it is cheaper and so am I.

 

[miss_thenorth]

Ok, hubby is now in on the decision here He thinks a vitamix (or similar) over the grain mill just now. and he acutally found this comparison of vitmix vs blendtech. http://www.rawguru.com/vita-mix/vitamix-blender-blendtec-comparison-chart.html He thinks the blendtech would be a better machine. While we do do smoothies alot in the summer, (also making them once or twice a day, for all four of us), the fact that it can grind inot flour is the main reason for getting it, and meybe next Christmas, if grinding flours becomes part of our weekly chores, maybe getting a mill then.
has anyone heard of the Blendtech?

 

[k0xxx]

We have the Country Living grain mill. I'd rate it at 4.9 stars (out of a possible 5). It grinds wonderfully, isn't hard to turn, and grinds everything that we think to run through it.

The only reason that I took partial points off is that it has a few more parts to remove when cleaning than the Diamant that we really wanted. However, the Diamant costs over three times as much ($1300).

We have owned a Corona mill, and it wasn't bad, for what we paid for it. We also recently purchased a Back to Basics mill, which we haven't tried out yet. Emergency Essentials recently ran a special of $50 (with free shipping) and we picked it up as a spare, or to loan out. If you have the money to spend, and you think that you may ever have to grind during an extended power outage, I whole heartedly recommend the Country Living.