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Too much very fine grain 'flour' in my grain order

Post #1 made 10 years ago
by chesl73
I recently ordered two separate grain bills from a new grain supplier I'm trying out.
I asked for the grain to be milled and for it to be a bit finer as it's for BIAB.
I did a brew yesterday with one of the grain bills and I noticed that there was a lot of very fine almost like powder/flour in with the grain that was in my kettle.
My kettle doesn't have a ball valve so when I transfer to the fermenter I usually simply have a standard kitchen fine sieve over the opening to the fermenter and I pour
the wort through the sieve, when I get down to the break and any trub I stop and lose some wort. However, in this case, because there was a load of this fine grain flour and it is too fine for the sieve to catch it stirred up pretty quickly and I ended up leaving behind quite a bit more than I normally would.
I wanted to filter out this 'flour' from the second grain bill before I use it so I took the second grain bill today and I poured it in small batches through my sieve into a bucket so I could separate out the 'flour' and it turned out there was loads of it.
I weighed it and out of a total of 2.6Kg of grain, there was 1.5 'normal' grain and 1.1Kg of this flour.
See picture attached, the filtered grain is in the bag and the 'flour' is in the 5L jug.

I'm fairly new to all this so wanted to ask, is this normal? ie, it doesn't seem normal to me that there is 1.1Kg of this very fine sand like flour out of a total of 2.6Kg of grain.
Is this fine flour powder even fermentable? Should I have a word with the grain supplier?

Thanks
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Last edited by chesl73 on 19 Dec 2015, 19:56, edited 1 time in total.

Post #2 made 10 years ago
by joshua
chesl73,
The White Flour is Starch, and Will Convert during the Mash, A good Thing.
The Brown Floor is Ground Husk, Bad.

The Grain Miller appears to have use used a Grinder, and Not a Crusher.

If you can start the mash with the Brown Crushed Grains, and Dough-in, wait a few minutes and then add the White Flour, if you can.

The white flower should Convert in a few minutes, due to it's size.

My thoughts are, if you have what is called No-See-Um Voile in Aussie land, get a piece.
Use it for the Flour, as a tied-Bundle in the MASH Bag, just don't tie it to firmly.

Or line the Lower 1/4 of you BIAB Bag with No-See-Um mesh, that Should Catch most of the Husk Debris.

But, DO NOT use that Material as a full bag, as it will take FOREVER to drain
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Too much very fine grain 'flour' in my grain order

Post #3 made 10 years ago
by Lumpy5oh
The easiest and best thing in my opinion would be to get an auto siphon. It is an extremely useful tool for brewing and a must have. Brew as normal and instead of pouring the wort use the siphon with the tip up off the trub. You can lower the tip as the wort lowers and suck it right off the trub leaving little wort behind.
Here is one on Amazon. Be sure to go thru the banner ad here if you plan on ordering from them. It doesn't cost you anymore and it benifits this site.
http://www.amazon.com/Fermtech-Regular- ... B0064ODELI
Also there really is no need to ask for a finer crush. A 90 min mash will get the sugar out.
Last edited by Lumpy5oh on 20 Dec 2015, 00:05, edited 1 time in total.
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Post #5 made 9 years ago
by DanIAm
Very late to this...

But for anyone researching this for a current issue, you could use the spent grain as a filter.

How? Well, maybe with that very same sieve that Chesl73 was using, 2/3 fill it with your spent grain and use it as a filter. If you use plastic based finings and feel a bit dubious about drinking them, it's pretty well all congealed at the bottom of the kettle and bound to proteins (doing it's job as fining), the spent grain filter will keep that out of your beer for the most part when your going for the last liter or two of wort in the dregs.

Post #6 made 9 years ago
by nosco
A bit late as well but.... I think its a total myth that you need to have your grain crushed finer for BIAB. I think others here will agree with me. The extra water used in BIAB (or full volume mashing/brewing) means more sugars are rinsed out of the grains. Id say the finer crush is why you have a bit more flour than usual. I have always had my grain crushed as normal by Grain & Grape and never had an issue with getting expected OG. If anything I get over expected OG.

Make sure you dont use the auto syphon in hot wort.

My 2c
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Post #7 made 9 years ago
by jhough
nosco, very true. what I remember is that a normal crush is what works out good. A finer crush does not increase the og that much. that's why 2x crushes are a waste of time & energy.
J
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Post #8 made 9 years ago
by PistolPatch
Lots of good info above :peace:.

Also make sure you read What Should my Crush Look Like?

The only time you should consider double-crushing is if your mill has crappy knurling such as at my LHBS where the knurling can allow a grain, if it falls a certain way, to pass through the mill uncrushed. In that case, a second run will often get those uncrushed grains and not pulverise the already crushed ones too much.

If I ran grain through my mill twice which has excellent knurling (a grain can't pass through it without getting nicely squashed or cracked in some way), I'd end up pulverizing the grain. Pulverize the grain adds tannins (do you want to boil wood in your beer?) and slows your lauter (draining) which can even lead to more sweet liquor being retained and therefore lower kettle efficiency!

I reckon the perfect mill would cut every grain in half length-ways as this would give maximum access to the desirables and minimal access to the undesirables. The link above has more info on this.
Last edited by PistolPatch on 10 Jan 2016, 16:37, edited 1 time in total.
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