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Adjusting the Gap on my Grain Mill

philm63

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Anyone have experience milling different types of grain using different gap settings on their Barley Crusher? Mine is set at the factory default (0.039", I believe), and I've never messed with it.

I'm finally going to move forward with my first Hefeweizen next weekend and I'd like to get a finer crush on the wheat compared to the pils malt. I know the Barley Crusher is adjustable, and I know my way around a set of feeler gauges, I've just never messed with the gap setting before and would like to know what other folks have seen/done.

What gap setting have you used or seen used for wheat malt, for example?
 
Since wheat has no husk, I simply run wheat through on its own, and then mix it with the other grains when I run those through.  This gives the wheat two passes, but with some "cushion" so it doesn't turn to dust. 

More so than adjusting the gap, I have had great success with spraying the grains the night before.  It helps the husks twist off whole rather than turn to dust.

The first three pix here show the difference:

http://blueribbonbrews.com/photos/process/
 
I recently attended an AHA Rally at a local (fairly large) brewery here in Georgia, and the brewery tour included a walk under the kettles where they described a tank that took the grain and soaked it in water, and then pumped it into the crusher and then off to the tun. They told me this allowed the husks to slip off the kernels much more easily preserving the husks resulting in a better grain bed come lautering time.

This got me to thinking about MaltLicker's grain conditioning technique - I am intrigued. I know I don't need to do this to my wheat malt for my upcoming Hefeweizen next weekend, but I'm thinking of trying it on the pils malt the night before brewing.

@ MaltLicker - do I just spread the pils malt out on a couple of sheet pans and give them a spritz with distilled water and leave them open over night? Or do I spritz them a lot (get them pretty wet) and cover them, or... ? Should I lay down paper towels first, or... ?

 
Philm63

One of my favourite beersites is Braukaiser.com
In your case Braukaiser has an interesting chapter about conditioning malt/wheat, wet crushing/mill gap settings for both wheat and malt and some illustrative pictures.
Here is the link: http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Malt_Conditioning

Regards,
Slurk
 
@Slurk -

Wow, looks like Kai runs his wheat malt through the conditioning as well, and he knocks his rollers down to about a 0.022" (0.55mm) gap! That's pretty tight, IMHO.

Might not change my gap this time, as per MaltLicker; I can just run the wheat through once, then run it through again with the pils malt. I've never had a stuck sparge yet, and I'm not sure I want to grind that fine and increase the risk of a stuck sparge. We'll see how this works and I can always adjust from there.
 
I spray wheat as well, and even without husks it helps. 

I spread out the grain on my island counter in the kitchen and use a spray bottle on fine mist.  Then I mound it up, spread and spray twice more.  Three shots usually is plenty, and then I put it back in the bowls and I crush in the morning before mashing in. 

Most grain is dried to <4% moisture content, and I read this misting only adds back ~1%, but it's right on the husks, so they twist off rather than crumble.  And let it sit overnight prevents the grain from being so wet that the mill gets gooey. 

I'd have to check, but I think the gap is set tighter than factory, perhaps around 0.033? 
 
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