Yes, many BIABers use coffee grinders, they're a cheap entry point for grain brewing. BIAB gets away with the fine crush with ease, if you were gravity lautering (i.e. using a manifold in a 3-V setup), then it would be no use at all. So, you should be right to go already, try out the food processor's coffee grinder!
I have a Marga mill, they're $A140, second hand they come cheaper. An excellent mill once set up correctly and powered, that's easily achieved with a drive shaft, which is just a filed- down bolt in the cordless drill chuck the other end goes in the mill. You can drive them by hand too, but I'm lazy...

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Try the food processor, and when you get sick of it get a nice mill (Like a monster mill )

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Storing grain. Buying a mill.

Hi there cheetah,

A couple of things to think on...

1. With BIAB, you should aim at a normal crush. A very fine crush will not give you a stuck sparge but it will give you more trub that you will have to deal with later and also a very slow draining bag. A fine crush is not something we should strive for in BIAB.

2. My good mate Ralph has said that many BIABers use coffee grinders. I am going to ring him and ask him who??? . I have read, very occasionally, of an all-grainer (traditional more than BIABers) using a coffee grinder. It is rare, not common. If you want to crush 5 kgs of grain you definitely don't want to use a coffee grinder. For a start, it will take you ages.

3. A mill is an expensive bit of gear. If hand-driven, a small mill can be laborious to use. A good quality mill takes a lot of thought and some money to set up. It also takes space so...

Don't rush into buying and storing your own grain...

People will tell you that grain lasts forever but the specs give malted grain a best used by date of 6 months if stored correctly. Depending on what beers you brew, you might need to carry two or three base malts and around 10 specialty malts. Often you'll find that you run out of a malt and need to get some malt mailed or take a run to the home brew shop to top up costing you $5 in petrol.

What I am saying is that storing your own grain is great but if I was forced to remove one aspect of my brewing from my home, then the first thing to go would be my stored grains and mill even though I love them. They are definitely not a necessity.

The most expensive ingredient in brewing is your time. A few extra dollars spent on buying grain as and when you need it might well offset the hidden costs of storing your own grains. (Some shops will crush your recipe and mail it to you in vacuum sealed bags.)

Obviously, there are many situations where storing your own grains is the most sensible way to go. I think though that a brewer should not be storing any malt until they have bought a decent mill.

Hope that makes some sense cheetah

Cheers,
PP

P.S. This post here might be of use as well.

• • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From Australia
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PistolPatch wrote:

The most expensive ingredient in brewing is your time.

A little OT but,
Sorry PP, I think I have to disagree with you there, I don't think you can apply a price on time when your doing things for yourself, unless you intend to profit from it, or it's stopping you from making money.
My 2c anyway
Sort of Back OT,
For me I agree with PP in the case of a coffee grinder. I think it would create more hassle than gain.
Having a lhbs crack the grain for you is good for a start, however you a limited in opening hours and delivery times.
If you have a mill and a stock of grain, you might find you have a spare few hours on a Sunday afternoon, you can spontaneously rip out you brew gear and brew away.
So to conclude all that dribble I personally would save and get a good quality mill.
Cheers

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Sorry, by "many" I didn't mean a majority or anything but there are certainly a few out there. For starters, I used one briefly with no hassles, our good friend Nick swears by his coffee mill as well and he's a long- time BIABer, here's another, albeit with some issues. Another chap using a food processor, while TB tried a few different things as well. That's just one forum so IMO they're not uncommon. Drainage and trub I don't feel are more problematic, not really significant issues, certainly wasn't the case for me.
Invariably in discussions about whether a coffee grinder is any use for All- Grain, many 3Vers don't grasp just how trivial the crush is for BIAB, that's where I think a lot of the misunderstanding comes from. Sure a fine grind is in no way helpful for traditional lautering, but doesn't really effect BIAB as it doesn't cause manifold blockage hassles.
BTW, I'm talking about modern electric coffee bean mills, the motor runs at thousands of RPM with a couple of sharp blades, it takes just seconds to reduce malt to a quite fine crush, however the batch size is small but it doesn't take ages to mill enough for a batch. They're not that different to food processor attachments, I'd consider them to be equivalent.
To wrap up, a proper grain mill is ideal by all means, however a coffee grinder or food processor is adequate as a substitute. Just one alternative for novices hoping to try All- Grain for the first time, if the choice is between sticking with extracts/ kits and BIAB with a coffee mill, I know which I'd recommend.

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LOL Rooster

I didn't see Flaming Cheetah's post until now so thanks for the bump. This "too finer grinding" needs more explanation.

Basically we are dealing with particles sizes. From largest to smallest we have...

1. Crushed grain husks (Large Solid).
2. Grain bag mesh size (Medium Solid).
3. Flour (Fine Solid).
4. Sugars (Liquid).

Any crush will give us some flour but flour is smaller than our grain bag mesh and we really don't want those solids in our boil. (It just means we have to get rid of them later and they also slow down our flow into the kettle therefore delaying the drain or reducing our real efficiencies.)

What we really want is for the grain husks to act as a pre-filter to the grain bag. We want the water to be able to penetrate the grain, leach out the sugars and leave the flour behind in the crushed shell of the grain as much as possible.

So. a proper crush (grain flattened with 2 or three breaks) is always the best for any type of all-grain brewing. BIAB has nothing to do with it.


PP

• • SVA Brewer With Over 100 Brews From Australia
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