Build your own barley grinder--nah.

One question that arises for home brewers that use a lot of grain, is should they invest in their own barley grinder (a.k.a. grain mill)? If you are one of those obsessed, all-grain brewers who buys 50 lb grain sacks from your local Portland homebrew store--or wherever you live--to get a discount, you'll soon realize having a grain grinder at home would be convenient.

You can buy a hand-crank grinder, or even motorize the thing. If you motorize it, you can hack it with a power drill, or take the more elegant approach of a motor and pullies ("sheaves" is the right term, I'm told). Some brands to look into are:

• Schmidling (Jack Schmidling's stuff). Hand crank and motorize-able.


• Barley crusher. Affordable hand-crankers?


• Crankandstein.. clever name, solid metal parts, for the do-it-yourself types: some assembly required I think.
  

All this is nice, but I am usually a lazy partial-extract brewer. Still, I've been looking at building a safe, nicely finished grain grinder. I have found that it is a rubbish lot of work if I'm to properly conceal belts, wiring, and so on. Rubbish lot.