Milling grain- whats your ideal crush?

perfect

 

That looks great. I like using a similar crush on my friends mm3 mill. You should prepare for way better efficiency than morebeers crush.

 

Looks pretty similar to what I get with mine.

 

These photos belong in the Homebrew **** thread - - - Orgy category. I need a towel . . .

 

Yea you should get an electric drill. Milling a full sack of grain will burn through battery packs like crazy.

 

I'm using a Barley Crusher set to .035. Looks a lot like the pic, but it's hard to tell. My efficiency has been pretty consistently in the low 80's.

Edit: I use a 12V Bosch drill with a 3 Amp Hour battery. One battery will do about 20# of grain comfortably. Nevertheless, I always have 2 full batteries before I start. The hand crank is a PITA.

Thanks for reminding me - I need to check the gap next time I brew.

 

You could go finer, and the lauter will slow down as you do. The mash becomes more cake-like and wort tends to sit at the top, (at least in my rectangular cooler during batch sparges). This will do well for light wheat and rye additions, and generally not needing rice hulls.

I have mine set in a similar fashion. If I want it finer, I run some of it through twice.

 

My Monster Mill is set to 0.038" and I expect and routinely get mid 80s % efficiency for my mid-gravity beers.

I haven't messed around with it deliberately, but it did loosen up over the course of about a year and a half or so. When I noticed the efficiency drop, sure enough the gap had widened significantly.

 

I see a lot of shredding-type damage in the husks.
Close examination reveals very few husks appear whole.

Whether whole husk are more better than shredded husks is 10-point toss-up.

Side note about roller gap spacing:
The final result of milling is related to gap spacing and RPMs.
A gap of 0.038" won't produce the same grist if milled at 350 RPM as it will at 1000 RPM.

 

Looks similar to my 0.034" gap space which yields me 79% - 84% depending on the size of the grain bill.

 

Right or wrong, I crush mine finer. I get tons of flour. I need to dial my mill back again. I got 88% efficiency on an altbier yesterday, and I really only wanted low 80s.

 

I have a 2-roller Monster Mill set to 0.035. My efficiency is ~88% or so for most batches. I would say my crush is slightly smaller than the OP's pictures. I'm grinding my grist today for tomorrow's Bo Pils. I'll have to take a picture for comparison.

 

I set gap the thickness of a credit card for my barleycrusher. It works for me.

 

Your crush looks good, could go a little finer but there's nothing wrong with what you have.

The ideal crush, in theory, would be the starchy kernel completely pulverized into flour and the husk essentially completely intact (merely cracked open but still in one or two pieces).