My wife recently purchased a Kitchen Aid mixer. It came with a meat grinder attachment I intend to use for processing venison scrap into hamburger, sausage etc… One of the other attachments you can purchase for it is a grain mill. Has anyone ever tried milling with one of these? Supposedly you can mill the grains from “cracked” to fine consistency. Price is about $110 dollars.
I asked my wife about using her Kitchen Aid mixer to crush grains. I’ve seen that look before. I hope you have better luck.
Thanks
Ed
Those kitchenaid attachments are a neat idea, but they’re pretty much overpriced and underperform. I would put the money for one of those towards an actual mill. You’ll be glad in the long run, especially when you get ambitious with a 20# grain bill and burn out your mixer.
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I just looked at the kitchen aid website the grain mill looks like it has bread makers in mind, not brewers. There is no hopper. So you’d have to process grain scoop by scoop. Definitely not suited to all-grain brewing.
That said, I bet it would be nice to have to crush specialty grain when brewing off-kit extract recipes. You could buy specialty grains by the pound uncrushed, and save a buck or two over kits.
Thanks for the replies. I’m not doing all grain yet but could see that happening down the road - sooner rather than later. I think getting a mill designed for the task is a smart way to go. If my wife wants the attachment for her baking, I won’t discourage her, - I’d have the best of both worlds!
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Good plan. Just remember you wouldn’t appreciate your wife using your brew pot to make clam chowder. Just sayin😀
If you shop around, you should be able to find a corona-style mill for around $25. These are great for crushing smaller amounts of grain, and depending on how stubborn you are work fine for all-grain batches as well. They’re really used for milling flour, but you can adjust them for breaking grains into large pieces all the way down to powder.
I nearly broke my kitchenaid mixer grinding meat with the grinder attachment - If you get a corona mill, put the money you save towards an actual meat grinder. It’ll be a lot less frustrating than finding out how poorly the attachments work!
Interesting. Maybe it’s because I have an older KitchenAid, but the grinder attachment on mine has been great and trouble free for 30 years. I have routinely used it from day one to grind and stuff 10-20 lbs of sausage at a time, and it has been trouble free (and only moderately slower than a purpose built grinder/stuffer).
I would agree though that the grain attachment would fall far short of usefulness for any serious AG brewing.
I think that’s exactly it. We have an older one and a newer one, and the newer one is definitely not the quality of the old one. But it’s still more frustrating to use than a 1/2HP commercial meat grinder!
Definitely not the same machine anymore. My daughter wore one out. My wife’s one still works but has gotten louder than it used to be.
Ear plugs! They really help, in a lot of ways! 
Sneezles61
