The Pasta Maker Grain Mill

[Toot]

After reading a post by Joking about the possibility of creating a grain mill from a pasta maker I gave it a go with much success! Following is a quick guide on how it was done..... Step One: Find a cheap pasta maker (I got mine second hand for $22 on trademe)

This one has 6 different settings to set how far apart the rollers sit. Step Two: Do this to it.....

To extract the rollers that look like this.......

Step Three: Get the rollers knurled or machined so that they are rough. The rougher the better

My paster maker had stainless steel plated rollers instead of solid ones so the best option was to get a machinist to cut horizontal lines in them. Step Four: Spend several hours trying to put it back together the same way it came apart.

Sounds simple right? Step Five: Make a hopper and attach it to something sturdy. ( much room for improvement here)

Step Six: Mill your grain!
Find more videos like this on RealBeer.co.nz


Find more videos like this on RealBeer.co.nz

Mills pretty good, only takes one run,definatly helps to be able to adjust the rollers.

Future steps: Get some sort of motor!! Currently I can mill about two kilos in about 15 minutes which is slow if you are gonna do a whole batch.Ive just been using it to mill my specialty malts so far so hasn't been too bad. Once it has been motorized it shouldn't be too hard to upgrade the hopper and mill whole batches! So far it has only cost me the price of the pasta maker plus $25 for the machinist to rough up the rollers. Much cheaper than ordering one from overseas.

[Bambule]

I have exactly the same pasta maker at home, and I had used it a couple of time to crush some specialty grains when I was partial mashing. However, although initially excited by these photos, I've been told by the trouble and strife that this will not be the fate of our pasta maker. I'll be shelling out some cash for the real thing in the short term future. Nice improvisation though, dedication, I like that

[JoKing]

Good on you mate... it's good to see that some of my senseless ramble is getting put to good use!

I'm stoked for you.

[martin w]

are all pasta makers capable of this? i've been looking at them on trade me but none of them have a close up of the rollers

[Toot]

I just made sure I got one that had stainless steel rollers and also that you could adjust them

[Cameron Burgess]

hey,
I was thinking about making something similar to this with an old pasta maker I found in the shed. It also has plated rollers but I am afraid that the plates might be too thin to cut lines into them. Did you have a problem with this? What else could I do instead of cutting the horizontal lines?

[Toot]

In the end I found that cutting an X pattern in the plates with a hacksaw worked better than the lines. You could do anything really as long as the rollers are rough enough to pull grain through. Some people hit them with a file which would probably work pretty good.

[RickyP]

How deep are your hacksaw cuts Toot?
My roughed up rollers (from a drill bit) don't pull the grain through very well.
Cheers for the info and pictures.

[Sam]

Hey, I found one of these pasta makers at kmart for $15 which I was pretty stoked about.
I've built a little rig out of mdf for hack sawing the rollers, just wondered if you had a picture of the hacksawed rollers I could look at? Just wanting to see how close together the cuts are? Did it take long? (seems like it would).