Malt conditioning - anyone here do this?

[Ladd]

Hey all, I was reading about the potential benefits of conditioning your malt prior to milling (lightly wetting it to soften the hull) and was curious if any of you bother to do this and if so have you noticed any great improvements?

I decided to give it a try last weekend and was at first mildly concerned that it wasn't going to work very well as it just seemed to squash the grain flat rather than break it open when milling. I thought I used too much water but I only sprinkled in about 100ml to an 11# grain bill and stirred it around for about 10 minutes for a uniform coating. I ran it through the mill a few times tightening up the gap a little each time before proceeding just to be sure it was processed enough. The first thing I noticed and was pleasantly surprised with was the improvement I saw during lautering, it was by far the easiest and fastest I have ever been able to run off my wort, even faster with this recipe with 15% wheat in it compared to 100% malt recipes I have made in the past! I didn't notice any improvement with regards to extraction efficiency though and still landed at my usual 75-80%, but it was my first time trying it and maybe I would be able to dial it in to improve that.

Anyway, I just thought I would share my experience and am just curious what everyone thinks about it; is this part of your brew day routine or IYHO a complete waste of time?

[adams81]

I don't have anything to offer to this but now I'm curious. What were you reading?

[Ladd]

I was flipping through the March-April 2013 BYO (vol.19, No 2 page 38 on the top left) and stumbled on this little blurb where they were talking about conditioned milling. I of course was curious about it so I found a bunch of info online about it.

This was a good read and pretty much what I followed

I just put about 100ml water into a spray bottle and misted the grains while I stirred. After the water was used up I just kept stirring until it was uniformly dampened. Then I tossed it in the mill. I had to adjust my gap down a little after the first run because like I mentioned above, it almost just flattened it out rather than grinding it up. I thought it worked well. Next time I may adjust the gap even smaller for the second run or run it through a third time to make sure everything had been exposed.

Edit to fix link

[Ladd]

I tried this again this weekend with much greater success! After running the 'conditioned' malt through my mill the first time, I really tightened up the rollers (I need to get some feeler gauges to know what gap for sure but they were damn close to touching!) and ran the malt through a second time. I ended up with a lot of flour in my crush, waaaay more than usual, and was thinking I had just ruined my brewday... Again I was really surprised with the speed and ease of Lautering, although this time I had to vorlauf a little more than usual do to get my wort nice and clear. I knew it worked substantially better this time as I ended up above my pre-boil target OG for the first time ever My big surprise came at the end of the brew day when I sat down to enter all my numbers into BS and calculated out my mash efficiency to be 89.7%! I am pretty impressed and will definitely be doing this as part of my regular brewday! Just thought I would share.

[Ladd]

Just an update since there was a question in one of the other threads about this. I have changed around my process a little since my first post. I usually just dump a half a cup (~100ml) right into the bucket on top of my grain instead of misting it which is way too slow. I stir it around really well with my hands making sure there is no water sitting on the bottom. I let it stand for 10 minutes or so, stir it around a little more and then run it through my mill. I set my gap so that it is tight on a credit card and it works great for any malt including wheat and rye. Here are a few images to compare conditioned vs non conditioned crushes (same mill gap).

First I ran a handful of my grain bill through my mill before conditioning:

normal.JPG

Then I conditioned the rest of the malt and ran it through the mill:

conditioned.JPG

Here is a side by side comparison with the normal on the left and conditioned on the right:

side by side.JPG

Here is a close up of the normal crush:

normal close.JPG

Here is a close up of the conditioned malt crush:

conditioned close.JPG

You can clearly see that the integrity of the husk is significantly more preserved when conditioning.

I'd love to hear if anyone else tries this and how they felt about it. I've noticed a huge difference with my lautering speeds and have not had a stuck mash even with 20% wheat or rye in my grain bills.

Cheers!
Matt

[jeffsmith]

Thanks for this Matt. Great to see the comparison photos. I may give this a shot.

[GuingesRock]

Very interesting!

I wonder if that's done commercially at all?

[LeafMan66_67]

Really informative post. The pictures clearly show the difference. Well done!

[HPhunter]

I doubt the commercial grinders use moisture, be hard to store it afterwards. The big mills have large diameter rollers, probably 6 of them or so. The angle affects the amount the husk is torn up. I buy grain medium pre-ground and it looks a lot like the wetted pictures. Even though it looks less ground it still produces good eff. A good lauter is more important to me then eff.

[mumblecrunch]

I said in the other thread that I was going to try this and sure enough I did; I followed Matt's basic instructions: ~100mL of water and stirred it in well with my hands until I was sure there was no water at the bottom of the bucket, then waited 10 minutes or so.

I tried to adjust my mill to "tight on a credit card" but the grain wouldn't pull in to the mill. So I tried "tight on the numbers on a credit card". That didn't work either at first, but after turning the mill backwards a little, it finally caught. It certainly felt like it was tighter as I was milling it. I was doing this the night before, so I put a lid on the bucket very loosely and left it. The crush looked very much like the pictures above: much less floury matter and less torn husk. The dust given off was also way down compared to without conditioning.

It ended up being close to two weeks before I got that brew done. Target gravity was 1.074 and actual OG ended up being 1.062. As always, there's a list of potential reasons for this, but I'm going to start with trying to crank my mill down tighter. When reversing my crank direction for a minute then going forwards again worked, I just went ahead and milled that way. I didn't consider that the same thing might have worked with a tighter setting. Also I was brewing this past Monday when it was like -14°C, so while I brought my tun inside for my mash, the things that needed to be done outside (e.g., giving my sparge a really good stir, squeezing my grain bag really hard) maybe didn't get done the way they normally would.

I'll try it again for my next brew and see how things turn out. I was consistently getting 75% mash efficiency with my previous mill setting and a double-crush, but I'd love to approach that with a single pass and with the lower dust levels.

[Ladd]

The lower dust level during milling is definitely another bonus. I never thought to mention it previously.

It sounds like it could definitely be some other variable in there that could explain the lower efficiency. What type of mill do you have? I am using the OBKrusher and have not had any problems getting the mill to catch the malt. Are you using a drill to run the mill? If so, try running it slower if you're not already. If you run it too fast the malt may "bridge" over the rollers and not get pulled in. I ran the numbers for that batch I made yesterday and ended up with 79.8% efficiency (I was set for 80% and hit my numbers spot on). It may just take a bit of tweaking of your mill to get it just right. I played around with mine a few times before I was happy with it. Setting mine tight to the credit card seemed to be the sweet spot. Keep us posted if you try again!

[Celiacbrew]

Tried this today and I have to say i feel stupid for putting off trying this. It makes such a huge difference for so little extra effort. I had the same problem with my mill set to tight on a credit card. I back it off a smidgen and no more issues with clogging/spinning rollers. Even with the extra headaches at the mill, the time saved while lautering was worth it. My tun drained like there was nothing blocking the flow. It just poured out. I don't know if I would do this if I had to squirt it with a bottle but the dump it in and mix it up with your hands thing worked great. Thanks for sharing this technique.

[Ladd]

Ya the squirt bottle only lasted for two brews and it got tossed in favor of just dumping the water in. The key is to make sure it is well mixed so you evenly wet the husk of each kernel. Glad to hear it worked as well for you as it did for me!

[mumblecrunch]

I tried this again for my brewday yesterday. I did crank my mill down to "tight on a credit card" and this time it caught no problem immediately; not sure what I did differently last time, TBH, but there must have been something. It's a lot more work hand-cranking the mill with it set so tight. Again, I'm not so worried about husk integrity because I use a voile bag in a cooler to mash so lautering is taken care of that way, but my efficiency was back up, probably a little higher than it had been. Definitely going to keep doing this.

IMG_3069.png

[Ladd]

Glad to hear you tried it again and had a better experience this time!

If it is of interest, you could improve efficiency even further but running the crushed malt through a second time with an even tighter mill setting. I did this a few times when I first started playing with the conditioning but didn't find the few extra points worth the hassle. I am happy with where I have my mill set at now. I only have to run through once, it takes a couple of minutes max to mill and I am getting 80% eff. consistently with a nice fast lauter.

Edit - Sweet looking crush by the way!

[amartin]

I tried this today for my APA. It didn't go exactly as planned, because the cooler I dumped the grain into was already wet, and my spray bottle wasn't working right, so the exact amount of water I used wasn't really measured. I think it still worked pretty well though. I narrowed the gap on my barley crusher to the point where I could slide a credit card through without getting stuck, probably around 0.030 - 0.032 (factory setting is 0.039), and the husks were still fairly intact. The narrow crush didn't mess with my lautering anyway, so I was able to get 70% efficiency, compared to the 60% I was getting before.

[Bowserm]

Would this work with my Corona Mill? or will this only work with a 2-roller mill?

I find the flour dust to be quite a lot with my Corona. Although, I just bought it and have only used it once.

[Ladd]

I've not heard of it done with a corona but I can't see why it wouldn't help. The purpose is to soften the husk so it doesn't shatter into so many pieces. Give it a try and let us know how it went!