Grain mills

[Leta]

Well, the main thing is to get one that uses stones, not metal.

I also wanted a manual, for the same reasons listed (SJTF, etc.) However, friends of ours gave us a Magic Mill that works like a champ. The price was right, since it was free! I still would like to a hand powered mill, but it has fallen to dead last on the SS list since we have an operational one.

 

[k15n1]

So I was looking around the interwebs and found that the home-brew crowd is making roller mills. They claim that these mills

1. leave the husk intact (and advantage when you're leaching the sugars out of the malt)
2. crack the malt
3. make very little flour, which eventually leads to a cloudy beer.

They're cheap enough to build because you can make the rollers out of steel pipes and make a wood box.

But I don't quite understand what's going on here. Why no flour? Couldn't you get flour if the rollers are close enough? And the mills are really fast compared to those mentioned on the thread. I wonder if you could speed up the grinding time in the other mills by coarsely milling the grain first...

 

[Doozerdoo1]

Wonder mill junior looks awesome, I need to get a manual one here soon, for now I have the Nutri mill electric.

 

[k15n1]

Wonder mill junior looks awesome, I need to get a manual one here soon, for now I have the Nutri mill electric.

I just bought one last week. Left the office early to try it out! So far, I've ground feed corn (makes good cornbread, actually), wheat, beans, peanuts, and almonds.

The marketing video claims 1 cup every 80 turns. It feels slower than that, so I measured it, and I got 2 g per crank, averaged over 100 turns. The measurement I found for 1 C flour is 125 g, so 80 cranks should produce 160 g---more than a cup of flour.

They also claim a normal person can turn the crank 80 times in a minute. I also doubt this, but haven't had a chance to time myself.