$12 pasta maker grain mill

[maheel]

I make a bit of beer and have always bought my grain milled. Last week i bought 50kg of grain un-milled.
you can buy great grain mills but i am cheap and thought i would try this idea, i had seen it on the interwebs before....
some say the work others say they don't or break quickly.

it's from K-Mart for $12. I thought the $12 would be worth a try...
the gear drive is cheap looking, but i reckon if it is treated carefully and not asked to crack to quickly it should be fine
it is going to be slow but us distillers have to have patience right :lol:

to get it to pull the grain through i scratched it up with a hacksaw blade (pasta makers are smooth)
the rollers are light SS tube so be gentle i dont think they would take being knurled in a lathe

at this stage it's not finished i need to make a hopper and a grain catcher and bolt it to a lump of timber
for beer you don't need flour you just need to "crack" it up a bit and kind of remove the husk to allow water in and Sugaz out
looks like it will go ok but i dont think it would crack dry corn

pics

[maheel]

i ran bit over 1kg through it last night
trick is to do one run to press the grain a little
then go one click finer to crack
it goes through the mill better then

made a dodgy cardboard hopper and it works quite well
not super fast but fast enough.
might make the drill run it so i can just feed it with two hands

[Heffers]

How's the mill holding up? Did the drill make it a bit better to use?

Do you rate 8-) or :x

[R-sole]

I'll be looking forward to your august post when you tell us you've finnished cracking the bag :lol: :lol:


Serious money saver though, mine was over $200

[maheel]

I have been very lazy and not really finished it (or made any beer...)

it sure is slow but.... it needs a motor so you dont need to crank it lol

i pushed 2.5kg of grain through it in about 30 mins by hand using a cardboard hopper a lot of the time was swapping plastic collection containers and filling the hopper etc...

it works OK, a good mill would be about $200 (start at) and well worth it if yor getting serious into all grain.
i will have to buy a proper mill soon but if i put a drill on it, it should do the job for a while i think.

[R-sole]

Otherwise you'll have muscles on your shit.

[maheel]

updated "mill"

i use my drill to power it and it chews up a kilo in about 3 mins

i think i am going to buy a real one, this works but i want a blingy real one :)