Anyone who knows me knows that I love to tinker.  My homebrewing hobby has spawn countless other hobbies – carpentry (brew stand, fermentation fridge, bar), wood turning (taphandles), electric (eHERMS, stir plate, brewbot), blogging (duh), soldering (eHERMS, brewbot)…you get the idea.

So, when I recently sat down to think about my next steps in my homebrewing journey, I wanted to focus on making some of the more tedious tasks easier and more enjoyable.  And that starts with milling grain.

I own an old barley crusher grain mill.  It works OK, but the rollers are getting a bit warn out, and I’m considering upgrading to a 3-roller Monster Mill soon (if you’re looking to buy me a Christmas gift…).  But this is not a post on mill reviews (I already did that), this is about the milling process.

When you are milling grain, if you’re like me then you have one hand either cranking or pulling the trigger on your drill, one hand holding the base on a bucket (because if you don’t, you inevitably will end up with grain all over your garage floor…yes, I’ve done that, and yes, I still brewed with it), and then you need another hand pouring your grain into the hopper.  And unless you’re one of the lucky ones with three hands, then this is a bit of a difficult dance.

The solution I’ve come to is to attach the mill to a stationary milling station (so I don’t have to hold the base and don’t risk grain on the garage floor), and to power the mill so that I only have to hit a switch instead of holding the trigger on the drill.  That frees up my two hands to measure grain and feed it into the hopper. Read more »