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Author Topic: Wet milling fail / I'm an idiot  (Read 8660 times)

Offline jjflash

  • Assistant Brewer
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  • Posts: 188
  • New Mexico
Re: Wet milling fail / I'm an idiot
« Reply #30 on: December 18, 2012, 05:55:31 pm »
More important than malt conditioning is the quality of your mill.
Some mills will shread malt husks to pieces when set to narrow gap.
(Some are so poorly designed they seem to shred regardless of the gap setting.)
To compensate for this brewers will open the mill gap too large with resultant decreased conversion.
Some brewers will even routinely add rice hulls to prevent sparge issues.

The best mills will fine crush with minimal flour and leave husks more intact.
Quite often these brewers will have motor drives on their mills.
These quality mills can fine crush without lauter concerns and get great conversion.

So the bottom line is that some mills with malt conditioning will allow you to crush finer and which may improve your conversion. Will also help prevent lauter issues.

I suggest a quality mill with a motor drive.

There is an excellent article by Chris Bible in the new January-February Brew Your Own about grain mills construction and use.  Great read.
---JJ---

I don't know half of you half as well as I should, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
- Bilbo Baggins