Thankful for rice hulls

Related to that, did this increase your efficiency over your previous batches?

 

Planning to get a Barley Crusher soon...what's this 'gauge' you speak of? Do I need some special equipment in order to fine-tune my crush? I figured there were dials/markers/etc or something on the crusher itself to make this clear?

 

Well, it's still a good number. Hopefully the rest of the work will go easier. I'm sure it will make for a tasty beer in the end.

Cheers!

 

You need a feeler gauge, like you would use to check tolerances on an engine. It is impossible to measure thousandths of an inch by eye.

I did see one person say the thickness of a credit card was about right for a grain mill, but that probably depends on the card...

 

Thanks! I had no idea. Since I know nothing about cars other than they have 4 wheels and burn gasoline (sometimes I'm a piss poor excuse for a male) what might I google to find one of these feeler gauges?

 

You can pick one up at any auto parts or hardware store.

 

Let's take a step back and read what we've written .

 

Touche, sir, touche. It's been a LONG day

 

Supposedly...all credit cards are 0.030" (0.76 mm).
Barley Crusher's factory setting is 0.39".

Setting the width to the thickness of a credit card on my BC produced a very fine crush with very few of the husks left intact. Next time will aim for something close to the middle.

 

I get great results with .033" on my Barley Crusher. Be absolutely sure to measure and lock in both sides of the roller.

 

Click Here.

 

Barley Crushers don't have blades. I assume you mean rollers. As has been said, a feeler gauge is probably the best way to go. On my mill, I dial in the desired gap with a gauge and then mark the body beside the adjustment knob just in case it were to move over time, though it doesn't seem to.

 

The vorlauf (or lack) wouldn't have driven your efficiency much. Your finer crush probably increased the extraction/conversion from the grains, but this was offset by leaving more wort behind in the larger grain bed (due to the rice hulls).

 

To my knowledge, the amount you vorlauf shouldn't change your efficincy. The amount of sparge water you use should change your efficiency. Am I missing something here?

 

A longer vorlauf could theoretically increase efficiency slightly, because it extends the effective time of the mash (if conversion and extraction were not otherwise complete) and it also recirculates the wort (though not much) which is known to result in higher efficiency. But the amount of recirculation would be so little compared with a true recirculated mash that I believe the effect would would be very, very small.

 

I always keep rice hulls on hand if possible. They are cheap, and you never know when you might need them.

 

I agree with you on this one, since I slowed down the runoff rate of my batch sparge I have increased my efficiency to 85% from about 75% (per Beersmith, I got lazy and don't do my own calculations here).