[Visor]

  +1 for checking for complete conversion, it isn't unusual for me to find that a 60 minute mash hasn't fully converted the starches to sugars. Other things that can help improve efficiency are getting your water right before mashing, some of us also feel that malt conditioning prior to grinding helps our efficiency. How much water loss to absorption are having? If you're losing much more than 1/10 of a gallon per pound of grain, you might get some improvement from allowing for a longer run-off from mash and sparge, assuming you have time to spare. I use a grain bag in a mash cooler & batch sparge, and am one of the heathens who squeezes as much wort out of the bag as is practical. I usually recover an additional 2 to 4 quarts of wort that others would have thrown away with the grain. And no, I haven't tasted any nasty tannin bitterness from squeezing.

Wow, that's really surprising.  In 526 batches I don't think I've ever had one that didn't convert in 60 min.  I've also found water to make a minor difference in efficiency.

[/b]
   Maybe it's the difference in elevation . I'm only on my 50th batch - 47 mashes and 3 parti-gyles, so I'll defer to your experience Denny, but believe it or not as you choose, I have had several mashes that an iodine test indicated still had unconverted starches after 60 or more minutes. I don't recall exactly how many without going through my brewing notes, nor what the particulars of each incident were.
   I didn't mean to suggest that water chemistry absolutely makes a huge difference to M.E. in all cases, but it certainly can have an effect, albeit only a small effect in some cases.

[Visor]

thanks all.

I think I will first get my own mill so I can double mill.

I was wondering is this a good one?


https://www.morebeer.com/products/monster-mill-3-roller-body.html

    To my way of thinking, you're better off getting the desired crush from a single milling rather than milling the grain twice, if for no reason other than trying to keep the husks as intact as possible in order to facilitate faster run-offs. There was a thread on this forum within the past couple weeks or so that delved into the matter of grain conditioning, it might be worth your time to find and peruse it, rather than re-hashing it all over again on this thread. Additionally, buying your grain uncrushed greatly extends it's shelf life.

[denny]

  +1 for checking for complete conversion, it isn't unusual for me to find that a 60 minute mash hasn't fully converted the starches to sugars. Other things that can help improve efficiency are getting your water right before mashing, some of us also feel that malt conditioning prior to grinding helps our efficiency. How much water loss to absorption are having? If you're losing much more than 1/10 of a gallon per pound of grain, you might get some improvement from allowing for a longer run-off from mash and sparge, assuming you have time to spare. I use a grain bag in a mash cooler & batch sparge, and am one of the heathens who squeezes as much wort out of the bag as is practical. I usually recover an additional 2 to 4 quarts of wort that others would have thrown away with the grain. And no, I haven't tasted any nasty tannin bitterness from squeezing.

Wow, that's really surprising.  In 526 batches I don't think I've ever had one that didn't convert in 60 min.  I've also found water to make a minor difference in efficiency.

[/b]
   Maybe it's the difference in elevation . I'm only on my 50th batch - 47 mashes and 3 parti-gyles, so I'll defer to your experience Denny, but believe it or not as you choose, I have had several mashes that an iodine test indicated still had unconverted starches after 60 or more minutes. I don't recall exactly how many without going through my brewing notes, nor what the particulars of each incident were.
   I didn't mean to suggest that water chemistry absolutely makes a huge difference to M.E. in all cases, but it certainly can have an effect, albeit only a small effect in some cases.

I think the problem is more with the iodine test than your mashes.  I stopped doing it 18 years ago because I found it worthless.

[Visor]

Is there another way to test for conversion that is available at the homebrew level?

[denny]

Is there another way to test for conversion that is available at the homebrew level?

You can trust biochemistry and just skip it (which is what I've done for the last 18 years).  Or use Kai's conversion efficiency chart to measure it.  But it's so easy to get false readings with the iodine test that it has no value to me.

[lindak]

If you do look to purchase a mill-- I called Monster Mill and based on their recommendation went with a 2 roller model--  morebeer carries that model, too.