Higher efficiency

So been reading on a english forum. About getting a higher efficiency. Some say make your grains bit wett before milling. The husk becomes softer. ? Me just thinking. It will create issues with the grain mill.

You are correct on both counts.

The idea is that you give the grain just the slightest misting some time before milling. It softens the grain so you get more crush, less shatter. When done properly the kernel pops out of the husk nice and crushed, and the husk remains mostly intact and ready to act as a nice, slow filter medium for sparging.

I tried it once, did just a bit too much misting, and spent the next couple hours tearing down the mill to wire-brush all the dough out.

But done properly, it’s a legit technique, just not something I care to do. — I BIAB so I think “extra crush” does more for me than spritz crush could.

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One thing i dont care for. Cleaning and taking apart the grain mill. Once mash going and htl tun light up. Like to drink a brew not extra cleaning. Knowing me will be full of anger if my mill gets messed up

Don’t get me wrong, I had to clean the mill because I screwed-up the technique. What I heard from people that did it correctly is that you end up with less flour in the air, so clean-up should actually be easier.

It’s called malt conditioning. There’s quite a bit of info out there about it.

You want to raise the moisture of your malt about 2%. By hydrating the malt a little bit you can crush a little tighter.

If you try it and see your mill starting to gum up run some dry, unconditioned malt through it.

Malt Conditioning | Brewer's Friend here it is a nice read. Mayby should try. On my old grain mill first.

It sounds like extra work to me on a home brewing scale just use a touch more grain. Or crush tighter and use rice hulls.

I always figured if you aren’t hitting your efficiency and try all the usual fixes then add more base malt. Cheap fix. Besides if you hit your efficiency with the extra malt and get a couple extra ABV all the better :dizzy_face:

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I swear, its all volume… Couple of things… you don’t have an accurate way to measure the HL volume… OR you are planning on a, say 5 gallon brew… but didn’t include… grain absorption, loss due to trub, volume left behind for the yeast cake… Yes, efficiency is another factor too… So as the others have stated… You make it up on you base malt…
I think Wilco has it understood… I hope as the others read this, they can connect the dots to building their grain bill… Sneezles61

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