22 replies to this topic

[Malzig]

Well I brewed a Tripel today to go with the grains that I crushed last night and Beersmith said I should have a SG of 1.082 and I ended up at 1.080. Thats the best I have done yet. While I can't argue with you guys that like to do the hand crank for exercise as I have too, I am more about getting the most from my grains in the long run. I am going to stick with the drill crush and see if this keeps up.

I just don't think the drill matters if you set your gap well. I get circa 90% with the hand crank. I doubt that's going go up no matter what I do.Actually, I've made a couple batches using a drill and the efficiency was about 82%, which was the neighborhood I was in at the time.

[ThroatwobblerMangrove]

I just don't think the drill matters if you set your gap well. I get circa 90% with the hand crank. I doubt that would go up with a drill...Actually, I've made a couple batches using a drill and the efficiency was about 82%, which was the neighborhood I was in at the time.

So the drill doesn't really matter - I figured the high rate of speed would make a finer crush (or maybe your arms are so powerful it's just like using a drill!!)

[ncbeerbrewer]

Good Discussion, I still think you can get a good grain crush with the hand crank in use. When I would hand crank I have always taken a handful of grains and just visually inspected the crush to see how it looks. The one observation that I made and yes this varies from one to the other is that after double crushing the grains with the drill attached I checked many handfuls and basically found not kernels intact. I did get a bump of about 2-3% effic jump too. Chuck,Wow living in an apartment and you have 4 fridge/freezers and 20 kegs. That sounds sweet, and I thought I was pushing my luck with having 4 freezers in my garage. Sounds nice.