$20 DIY grain mill

[Vesku]

Old treatmill (a paper shredder gave some parts as well) put into new work, meet the Weider Victory:

 Crush looks quite nice, at least to my eyes? Still needs a proper set up though. I need to get couple of welds done somewhere and get some imperial nuts before that + plywood for the cabinet.

I've a motor for it too, but I need to get some sort of gearing from somewhere before it can be used (landfill was out of stock). I'll use it 1st with the drill to see what part gives up 1st ;) . And O-rings on the rollers to help to start the secondary roller, I was surprised how small amount of force is needed to get the free roller going.

It's seems to be a really fast crusher...

What's the best place to get malts by whole sags in Dunedin?

[Ralph]

Nice work!

Try the Dunedin Malt house for sacks of malt?

[bart]

You could try Reitvelds supplies down on Stone St for some gearing stuff... and yea Malt House for sacks of grain. Come in on a Saturday and have a yarn!

[Vesku]

I got the hopper done and all seems to work just great. I had to limit the grain flow quite a much, otherwise my drills chuck started to slip. I was lucky and could use "the leaning assembly mounts" of the treatmill to fix it on the tabletop, just need 2 1" holes to drop the mill in.

The crush below is made with ~1.5mm gap. It's quite a big gap compared what the internet says it should be (~1.143mm). What do you think, should it be crushed finer?

I've so little of use for the mill that I think that I skip the motorizing thing. Quite happy to use it with the drill. I might put a crank on it, so I would get some exercise :)

[Ralph]

I have found that with my grain crushed at about 1.000 mm that I get good extraction rates without too much flour. I think at 1.5 mm or so you are likely to not get good extraction efficiencies.

[Vesku]

I'll reduce it when I do the 1st brew with the mill. 

Quite interesting site about grain conditioning before milling, have to give it a try: http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Malt_Conditioning

[Vesku]

I tried that conditioning thing. I really like the results, no flour dust at all even with 0.6mm gap and the best looking crush I've managed to do. I used ~100ml water for ~5kg of grains.

[Liam Callaghan]

Thats awesome Vescu!  I have looked at making these with local engineers but they are better and cheaper to buy from overseas.  Or in your case make at home for a fraction of the price, well done mate!

[Vesku]

Thanks, I though that I share this so everyone knows where's a good source of rollers. Another machine that might make a great donor is a belt sander. At least mine has a really nice big rollers and I guess they get thrown away when the motor goes.

I did some tests with tighter gap and to my surprise the hull of the grain stays much better intact with smaller gap.

I made a crank for it from a cheap bicycle crank, it's fast enough for my milling. I might upgrade it later on to make it faster, anyone with extra left hand side XTR-crank?

[Ralph]

XTR = expensive to replace...

[Vesku]

Better still than my Race Face cranks that are expensive, but still a piece of crap.

Got the thing finished, a wee bit of shoe polish and some tweaking for the internals and it's done :D