My 18V cordless works great. Even after a lot of use as a drill and screwdriver it ground 11.25 pounds of grain this morning without recharging. Love my cordless drill!
Maybe I’m just lucky, but it costs nothing to try whatever drill you have.
[quote=“Old_Dawg”]My 18V cordless works great. Even after a lot of use as a drill and screwdriver it ground 11.25 pounds of grain this morning without recharging. Love my cordless drill!
Maybe I’m just lucky, but it costs nothing to try whatever drill you have.[/quote]
+1
My Ryobi from Home Depot mills my grain no problem. I do 3-gallon batches so 7-10 pounds grist, but I’ve milled with a half-dead battery, no problem.
It’s an 18v cordless mill, with attachments for drilling and diving screws.
Old_dawg yer funny!! :cheers:
What can I say I’m a dumb sheep.
Seems like I read a dozen times that you need a corded drill for grinding so I just assumed it would kill my poor battery powered drill. Guess I’ll give it a go next batch.
Oh my, noone is a dumb sheep, unless you keep avoiding an adventure and do a try!! Sneezles61
I was only poking fun at myself, but I am going to give it a try next batch.
I’m done with the barley crusher boys. I spent almost an hour trying to crush a 19 lb grain bill today. I have precious little time to brew these days so I don’t need anything extending the brew session. That thing is going on the scrap pile where it belongs. Not sugar coating it anymore. The barley crusher is a POS.
I would strongly suggest the cereal killer if you are looking in the $100 price range. I’ve only run about 200lbs through this since I bought it so it’s relatively new but it’s never failed me. But I’ll let the reviews speak for itself. Over 100 ratings, and over 90% of them are 5 stars. I won’t post a link to it since it’s only sold at a competitors site but you can find it by googling it.
If I had to nitpick about what i don’t like about it, the knobs used for adjusting the gap have numbers on them denoting the gap width but they aren’t at all accurate. You’ll need some feeler gauges to get the actual gap measured.
Love my barley crusher!
I’ve had mine about 3 years. The only issue I’ve had is when my compressor went tits up and I couldn’t blow it out.
I’ll run 13-26 lbs through it at .28 with no problem.
barley crusher is a piece of junk. wore mine out years ago and bought a Monster. its so solid and consistent, i almost feel like i take it for granted.
+1
I wonder if the typical cordless drill on low speed setting might be too fast to be milling and causes excess wear on rollers or something else? I killed some cordless batteries milling too so I advise against them… I found an old corded beast and am much happier with crush (tag says 200rpm IIRC) but it takes about at least 5m to mill 15lbs or so. Long enough I need to sit or kneel. I remember the cordless did this what seemed like 5x faster (low speed) even though drill specs said 300rpm which is supposedly fine for mills… From what I can tell the guys hand cranking aren’t having problems either. Puzzling.
i also put about 2500# through my BC before decommisioning it. That said, it began giving me issues long before then.
Paul, you think you will get more than that out of the Monster?
2500# to me is basically 167 - 15lb or 250 - 10lb (5G) brews. I brew 8x a year, so that’s like 20-30 YEARS for me… :lol:
[quote=“zwiller”]Paul, you think you will get more than that out of the Monster?
2500# to me is basically 167 - 15lb or 250 - 10lb (5G) brews. I brew 8x a year, so that’s like 20-30 YEARS for me… :lol: [/quote]
haha yeah - I think I swapped over around batch #130, at the time I made mostly 10gal batches with an occasional 5er. my new system, i only brew 10s and am currently at batch #203. My Monster is barely even broken in yet. It probably will outlast me - I think Frank (?) said he would expect 25-30K # before the knurling might need a reconditioning.
[quote=“blatz”]
haha yeah - I think I swapped over around batch #130, at the time I made mostly 10gal batches with an occasional 5er. my new system, i only brew 10s and am currently at batch #203. My Monster is barely even broken in yet. It probably will outlast me - I think Frank (?) said he would expect 25-30K # before the knurling might need a reconditioning.[/quote]
WOW :cheers:
I’ve been brewing over 20 years and still probably have most of my recipes in either paper or Promash but no idea actual batch # 
[quote=“zwiller”]
I’ve been brewing over 20 years and still probably have most of my recipes in either paper or Promash but no idea actual batch # [/quote]
Same with me. I made a brew journal sheet in Word a long time ago and print one most every batch to take notes and keep track of everything. Never gave a thought to numbering them so I guess I could count them but I also have some in ProMash, on a piece of scrap paper or no record at all. I will reach 20 years next summer.
Still using my JSP with a corded drill.
Have had my JSP over 20 yrs. ,same one, doing 18-20 batches a year.
Man, I need to get off my a$$ and brew more! :lol:
Just an update on my monster mill (3 hardened roller), well over 70,000# and replaced the sides that have the easy adjusting knobs. The old bushings show slight wear but could have gone on longer. The knurling looks and feels pretty good though not as sharp as new. I’ll replace the rollers when I start having feeding problems or I get a bigger mill. I doubt a homebrewer could ever wear on of these out. Mine is powered by a 1/2 hp electric motor turning the mill at about 220 rpm.
