BeerBorg

Was having some efficiency problems as of late, figured I would tighten the gap on my grain mill. Weeeelllll, I pulled out the feeler gauges and combined two to make .036 and the gap was much bigger than the .039 I thought it was set at. Don't know if it was from leaving thumb screws not against the block or couldn't do simple math when I first set it up, but the gap was .045. Was missing by anywhere from .003 and .009 on OG, was putting the blame on boil-off till now. Yesterday after adjusting hit every number on the screws. Have a brew tool box with salts and other brew things near where I mill and the set of feeler gauges is in the box, will definitely check before each brew.

Sometimes our process becomes so automatic we forget to double check things. Glad you got it figured out.

It's amazing how the smallest of things can have such a large impact. Good to hear you have it fixed.

Unless you have brewed beer yourself, people will have no idea on just how many dozens of little things there are to check. I guess that's why we love the challenge of brewing so much.

No kidding! The difference was like 2 sheets of paper thickness from what it was to what I thought it was. When I got to the end of the grain I watched as it was going thru the rollers and getting crushed, where before (which should have raised a red flag) I could see the grain almost drop thru the roller with minimal crush.

I'm glad you found the source of the problem and that it was a quick fix, Dawg. I just got a new mill myself, and I didn't use a gapper to set the rollers; I just did the credit card trick. I also ran some old grains I happened to have as a test, and eyeballing told me it looked pretty darn good.

I've brewed two batches using it, and hit my OG right on the screws, so I guess I can't complain.

@Dave are you double crushing your grains?

ScrewyBrewer wrote:@Dave are you double crushing your grains?

Nope. Never felt the need to.