Grain Mill

One of the last things to document but the first thing I did and the first thing you need to start the brewing process. After my semester of TIG at Laney College, I took the summer session and got permission to do some brewery construction. Not having much experience with real projects (expect for a brewery paddle), I decided to start on something small that wouldn’t be in contact with water.

I already had a mill from Glatt Manufacturing from a couple years back and liked it a lot. I had already modified it slightly by adding an old drill to it for milling but I hated having to refill the tiny hopped and keeping my hand on the drill.

My first alteration to my basic mil would be to build a bigger hopper. Luckily, the Glatt is already all stainless construction (except bearings and gears L ).

Using a couple of pieces of scrap metal, I built a top that looks like this…

I wasn’t extremely happy with some of the welds that were too hot and some warping that occurred from bad design but none of these things detract from the basic design.

Next thing to do was to make it permanently motorized. I tried a design using the drill I had but it shattered soon after I tested it. I decided to get a real motor down a Grainger that was rated at ¼ hp 1750 rpm. I used a pulley and a couple of sheaves to reduce the rpms to around 280 or so rpms from information I gleaned from the HBD.

TO mount the motor, I made a stand for the grain mill and motor from ss tubing. The space from the mill to the motor was set somewhat precisely and then I mounted the sheaves to the grain mill and motor. After placing the belt on the sheaves by easing them on like a bike tire, I decided to try it out. I fully expected the belt to come flying off as soon as I plugged it in but it worked!

The grain mill stand was made with a long piece of tubing come out of the bottom of it to let it mount above the mash tun. My original thought was I could premix the grain with the mash strike water to get even heat distribution rather than the shock method of dropping the entire grain bill into the mash liquor in one fell swoop. I also made mount points for the grain mill on the front and back of the stand to mill into a bin for traditional grain milling.

One of the last revisions that I made to the grain mill was to put a protective cover over the pulley for safety. As anyone who has looked at a pulley knows, it would be very bad if you caught you anything in the moving sheaves or the pulley itself. The cover mounts over the system to keep all the moving parts away from your hands.