Malt Mill
There is a school of thought that says that crushed malt goes past it's best very quickly and that, for the best beer possible, you should crush all your malt freshly before brewing. However, I personally have brewed a lager with year old pre-crushed malt and seen no detrimental effect at all. I guess you take all the info onboard and make your own decision!
Although I don't subscribe to the school of though that precrushed malt goes off really quicky I do see a benefit to using freshly crushed malt. Therefore, after a lot of thought I have decided to take the plunge and get myself a malt mill.
I received my Barley Crusher malt mill from Beertech in June 2007. I've used it to crush many kilogrammes of malt and have been absolutely delighted with it.
Initial impressions were that it's a well made, substantial piece of kit. Having used it for several months now, I can say that my initial impressions have been proved right.
As supplied the Barley Crusher comes with a cranking handle which I use for crushing up to 10kg of grain. It takes about 5 minutes to do this and is a good workout but certainly not too much like hard work. Most home brewers who make 5 gallon batches will never use this amount of grain so will be quite happy hand crushing. However, with a 10 gallon brewlength I can quite easily use 15kg of grain in a single brew.
So, if I'm feeling lazy or I'm making a seriously strong beer I do tend to use an electric drill instead of the handle. This is easily done as the normal drill chuck fits onto the mill shaft without any adaptation required.
The Barley Crusher comes with the gap preset to 0.039" and I've not had any reason to change it. If I did need to change the gap though it is easily done by slackening two screws then turning an adjuster whilst checking the gap with feeler gauges.
I'd recommend anyone to get a Barley Crusher. It's a good quality, reliable malt mill which should last a lifetime.
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