Am I crushing the grain properly?

[Cata]

Hi guys!

I just bought a new grain mill, it's and adjustable two roller. Tried it for the first time yesterday with a 0.038 gap, but I'm not sure it it's good.
Should I have more flour?
I heard that some mill the grain twice, should I do it?

Here is a photo of how my crushed grain looks like.

Cheers!

 

[VikeMan]

That crush looks reasonable to me. How does it look compared to the crush you were getting before (from someone else's mill)?

 

[Jim R]

Looks ok to me. I ended up adjusting mine for later batches based on my efficiency and the potential for stuck sparges. I started out at 0.038 (every mill is different) and it looked perfect but I went above my expected OG and fought a stuck spare a little till I went to 0.041 which for mine worked out perfect. It is a little trial and error.

 

[RM-MN]

Try a batch with the mill set as it is. Does it get you decent mash efficiency? If not, adjust closer for the next batch. Repeat until you get a stuck mash, then set the mill just a little wider. The closer you can set the mill without a stuck mash the better the efficiency.

 

[day_trippr]

Agreed, experimentation is the way to optimization. Eventually one will figure out what a good crush looks like for their equipment.

But...keep in mind grain kernel sizes vary, and one may come across base malt that needs a tighter crush than "typical".
It happened enough that for a new-to-me malt I'll run a half pound through the mill and give it an eyeball, then adjust if needed, and record the gap used to use again with that bag on later brews...

Cheers!