I got pre-milled grain from an online retailer. When prepping for a brew day tomorrow I noticed a lot of seemingly un-crushed grain. I don't have a mill, so I'm not sure what my options are here, but is this worth brewing with? I am not too concerned about squeezing out all of the possible effeciency, but I wanted to make sure I'm not wasting my time either. Thanks for the help, sorry for the noob question, I haven't brewed in a year and I can't remember if it looked like this before.
I am pretty sure you already know this but: the grains in your palm are uncrushed. Do you have an estimate of what percentage of your product is uncrushed? Those grains which are uncrushed will not be properly converted during mashing. Cheers!
Thanks Jack, I did try to pick the most pristine grains, buy yeah ,I figured they were un-crushed. Its hard to out a number on it, and I don't have the grain sitting in front of me (it's in the basement, I'm trying to get my kid to sleep). That said, maybe a third. Probably better to look at the bowl picture, but it seemed like a lot to me. My decision is do I start brewing bright and early tomorrow as planned, or take drastic actions, like seeing if the lhbs is open and will let me use their mill (I didn't purchase from them so awkward to say the least) .
Do you have access to a food processor? I have used a cuisinart to grind grains in the past. You'd probably have to do it in batches. It would improve the efficiency. Too fine and you risk a stuck sparge, unless you are BIAB. But you don't need to powderize things
I'm leaning towards just using it as is. I looked at it again and think a third is an over estimate. I attempted to get a better picture as well.
Regardless of which picture, that's a lousy crush. You can certainly brew with it, but expect poor mash efficiency.
The meat tenderizer will gladly come out of its one use a year slumber and help you with your problem. Dump some grain in a bag or saran wrap and make sure it knows who's boss.
I guess I'm trying to get a feel for how bad the efficiency will be. Are we talking a 5 point drop, or 30. I can handle one the other would be pretty disappointing.
Thanks this is what I ended up doing. About 10000 batches in the world's smallest food processor to get through 17 lbs of grain. What a pain. Thanks for the replies guys.
I encourage you to have the retailer share some of the pain. Maybe send him the photo and explain how you'll be posting a negative review if he doesn't make it good. Hopefully will prevent other Brewers from getting burned.
get your own mill. These precrushed grains are always notoriously undercrushed so you have to buy more grain and so you don’t get stuck sparge.
Its crossed my mind. I've thought about it that last few years, but I only brew a few times a year, so it was hard to justify a couple hundred dollars to save a few bucks a batch. I might going forward just to avoid this hassle though
Before I bought a mill (well worth it), and after a similar food processor experience to yours, somebody suggested using a rolling pin.
Corona mills work fine. It takes a little diy but 95% efficiency I will upload a photo when possible,
