First mill hows my crush?

Hey yall,

I made myself a corona mill station this week (milled grain was backordered so I had the excuse). I performed all the modifications and practiced with some grain to try to get the crush right. Being very new to this I'm not sure if I went too far with the crush or not far enough, but my efficiency was slightly low, around 67%. The mash and sparge were performed flawlessly. Can anyone see from my picture if this crush looks good? Thanks for your help!

Drew

What's in your hand looks TOO crushed, but what's in the bucket looks good. (Weird)

I say run with it and see what efficiency you get and adjust from there.

Hackwood said:

What's in your hand looks TOO crushed, but what's in the bucket looks good. (Weird)

Click to expand...

My guess would be that what is in his hand includes the powdered grain that collects on the bottom of the mill while crushing the grain. At least that's what happens when I use my mill.

Looks a little bit too crushed to me. You could back off a bit and try the same recipe next time to see if it helps your efficiency. It's all about trial and error with the new equipment.

good luck,

I've been doing BIAB a lot recently and that looks about like my crush. Of course, you don't have to worry about a stuck sparge with BIAB, so you can afford a finer crush.

If your efficiency was 67% and you didn't have problems with lautering or draining the tun, your crush/grind was pretty decent. You can try going a little finer as it would push your efficiency up a little but when you go to drain the tun you may have problems. Your decision at this point, is it worth chancing a stuck sparge to try for higher efficiency?

If you were doing BIAB, I'd suggest you tighten that mill down until it was as tight as it would go because the bag would be the filter and if the wort doesn't want to just flow out you squeeze it out.

If you only got 67%, you could try to go finer. That looks pretty good to me. I have a mediocre mash/sparge method and I get 74% efficiency in a keg-tun.

I've been forced to use a mini food processor to get a fine crush on my grains. But it comes out like course flour with those tough to grind grains. But my efficiency is really up there because of it. I do PB/PM BIAB myself,& the fine crush is needed to get decent efficiency. But you have to adjust the crush to where it's just fine enough to do so.
I finally ordered the barley crusher grain mill from NB yesterday. Good ol' tax refund. It hasa 7lb hopper & is mounted on a base that'll fit my 5G home depot bucket & also comes with a crank handle. Per some previous conversations with a member,I'm going to try setting the rollers at .038" for the initial try when all my stuff comes in this weekend/next Monday.

I think it looks alright. I had a crush I thought looked good. For some reason my efficiency was about where yours is. I tightened my rollers and immediately my efficiency was in the high 70's. To me, the crush didn't look any different. Try tightening up your corona mill and run another batch. As long as you don't get a stuck sparge (and you can add rice hulls), what can it hurt?

Looks about right on to me.