DIY Malt Crusher Build

[Coontail]

Howdy!

So i'm brand new to home brewing and im still getting some of the necessary things to finally start fermenting. Tis' the season for ciders so i found the recipe to make some Graff. It requires the use of malts and i found out they have to be crushed! So here i am now making my very own cheap as possible crusher thing. I may have some questions along the way and any advice would be appreciated!


THE CRUSHER 3000: Thoughts so far

-Going for something small as the most i am brewing is 5 gallons of anything and i shouldn't have to crush more than 5 lbs of malts

-Going to turn some 1.5" aluminum stock for the rollers, will be knurled. Hopefully i don't underestimate the hardness of the malts but aluminum should be fine

-I have to figure out how to get the rollers to turn in sync

-Probably gonna go with a manual handle instead of electric as it'll be cheaper

-Hopper

 

[magno]

A couple thoughts:

On my mill (and most of the homebrew-scale mills that I know of) only one of the rollers is powered. The non-powered roller spins in sync with the powered roller naturally as the grain gets caught by the powered roller.

It may not be that much more expensive to power the mill if you use a handheld power drill to power it. This is what I do, and it works quite well.

You may want to think of a way to adjust the spacing between the rollers.

I look forward to seeing what you come up with!

 

[Coontail]

Thanks! i didnt know most weren't synced by gears, that sure makes things easier. I could make the handle so it's detachable in case the drill isn't usable at the time. ill find a way to incorporated the adjustable spacing

 

[jtratcliff]

Unless you're set on a roller mill, A corona-style mill in a homer bucket is a viable option... Especially for BIAB where intact husks aren't as important... But with conditioning the grain beforehand, even the corona leaves decent husks.... The mills can be found for around $15-24, homer buckets are what, $4? Need some scrap 2x4 and a drill.

There's an ugly junk mill in a bucket thread... my version is similar to this one: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showpost.php?p=8000674&postcount=2035

I think I might have even copied Wilser's design:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showpost.php?p=1308996&postcount=144

 

[Coontail]

I had already made the rollers last night so I've already committed to the roller design lol. I think the roller would be a cool project though I haven't gotten my DIY project fill in a while. I should also already have everything to make the roller design

 

[Coontail]

Speaking of the rollers...

I feel embarrassed to even show a picture because of how bad the knural is but.. the grains don't care!

View attachment 1506278137896.jpg

 

[jtratcliff]

Those look pretty nice to me!

Looking forward to see the finished product!

 

[Coontail]

Thanks!

 

[wilserbrewer]

Rollers look good to me, now all you have to do is keep them at a set gap and turn them. Not sure what diameter they are, but larger rollers require huge torque if fully loaded w grain. One work around is to only feed a small area of th rollers unless of course you have an arm breaker of a motor to spin the mill.

 

[Coontail]

I was thinking of a set gap of .038, would that be a good general size?

 

[day_trippr]

A fixed gap mill is going to be tricky. There's some dependency on knurling pattern and depth, but on my mill .038 would be "just ok" for barley and too loose for wheat, rye and the like.
When I'm lazy I've gotten by with .035 for a mixed grain bill but it's still not optimal for the smaller grains which do better at .030...

Cheers!

 

[Bobby_M]

You'd be surprised how hard some malts are. If you ever plan to mill rye or dextrine malts like carapils, those aluminum knurls will be polished smooth in no time.

 

[Coontail]

I could always make some stainless rollers along the way

 

[jtratcliff]

You'd be surprised how hard some malts are. If you ever plan to mill rye or dextrine malts like carapils, those aluminum knurls will be polished smooth in no time.

Wow! Really?

Like how fast? 100's of lbs? 1000's?

huh, just looked up the Mohs scale... 2-2.9 for Al vs 5-8.5 for steel...

Al is about the same hardness as copper or gold... I didn't realize...

Heck, rock salt is a 2! A finger nail is 2.5!

 

[Bobby_M]

To put it in perspective, a LOT of people are wearing out their knurls on a popular commercial mill (some kind of steel alloy) to the point where they are not getting good grain feed. I'd guess that is after 1000 pounds.

 

[Coontail]

Wow that's really surprising, id never think grains would wear down the rollers that much

 

[devils4ever]

Yep, my BC is shot. The knurling is wearing smooth probably used it for less than 1000 lbs. So, I bought the MM2-Pro with hardened steel rollers that are supposed to last more than 200,000 lbs!