"Porkert" Universal Mill
Porkert Universal Miller
I have never been able to work out the reason for it, but some grains from my homebrew shop are provided whole and some are crushed. Chocolate malt, roast barley and wheat malt are usually sold as whole grains, and wheat malt in particular is extremely hard and difficult to crush by hand. It put me off using wheat malt in my recipes for a long time.
After many years attempting to crush these grains with rolling pins, bottles and coffee grinders and making a mess all over the kitchen I finally treated myself to a multi grinder from my local cook shop. This is designed for grinding wheat and other grains in the kitchen and is ideal for grinding small quantities of grain for homebrewing. It is a 'Universal Mill' made by a company called Porkert from the Czech Republic and cost me less than £30, a few years ago.
Operation is simple: There are two cast iron burrs, one is fixed and the other is rotated by turning the handle. The fineness of grind is adjusted by a sprung nut on the shaft.
To set it up initially, all that you need to do is put some grain in the top and turn the handle a few times, then have a look at the crushed grain which it produced and compare it to some that you have bought ready crushed. Keep adjusting the nut and checking the output until what you are producing is of a similar fineness to the commercially crushed grain.
Once you've found the right degree of tightness, you just have to mark the nut so that you can tighten it to the same setting again. I used a permanent marker and made two aligning marks, one on the nut and the other on the handle. When I use it all I have to do is tighten the nut so that the two marks are aligned and I am ready to go.
I wouldn't want to use it to grind large quantities of malt, but anything up to about a pound (half a kilogram) only takes an easy few minutes turning the handle so it's ideal for grinding small quantities of adjuncts which you might need in your brew.