A good choice: old Family grain mill

I have come across this at the flea market. Needles to say it was very cheep, but works perfectly. My first thought was immediately, to check if it can be taken apart so that it can be cleaned thoroughly, to the smallest screw. It becameappearent, that it is great german design, easy to clean. I took it apart almost entirely, except for the wiring of the motor, cleaned it with brushes and detergent, so now it is completely gluten free.

Thhe fineness or coarseness can be adjusted very well and easily, so it fits any grain. Great for me, I use buckwheat, lentils, rice, millet, what not, all different sizes. The speed could be better, but it's definately at least as speedy as any mill turned by hand. The only downside is the size. But I can also use it to mill flour for my breads and baking, and that would have easily been worth the penny even if I got it new, for a much higher price.

old but good as new

unhulled rice crushed

Food safety problems with a corona mill

So, after all I decided to upgrade my milling process. So far I used a kitchen blender which actually worked ok, but part of the grains were not crushed enough while other parts were crushed too much. Not consistent in other words, and it also took long to mill the grains with it, because you can not just run it while continously pouring the grains in it, but run 5-6 batches for a 3 kilogramm grain bill.

First, I got a corona mill, cheapest online, and soon as I unpacked it, realised that the coating was weird. I ran it without grains to see if what I was thinking of was going to happen and of course, metal dust came out of it. Meh. I ran it with grains, but still. Then I figured that the shaving were not only coming from the plates, but the spiral and the shaft. I tried brushing the coating off with my dremel, but that didn't help. I complained and got a partial refund, but I am very suprised to see that the same kind of mill with the same or a very similar coating is sold everywhere, not only online but in brew shops too. Also read on forums that others had similar problems. This is just sooo not good.
Luckily I came across a great deal of another mill so I will think about what to do with this one later.

Another beer

This is an old one, from early 2017.  Brewed with lentils, buckwheat, sweet potatoes, hops and yeast.

Silicon pipes and food safety

I want to share some useful information that I recently learned while I set up a pump on by brew kettle. I decided to use a simple flexible pipe to recirculate the wort, mainly for consistency in temperature but it also helps with efficiency, sparging and moving the wort. First, I went to a local fitting shop and asked specificly for piping that can take up to at least 80 degrees C of temperature and is food safe. They gave me what they called a silicone pipe, and said it was both heat resistant and food safe. I have earlier learnt in another store, talking to a seller, that there are pipes on the market which people call silicone but in fact are plastic. So I thought I would run a test on my new pipes with plain hot water. It got extremely flexible at around 50 degrees celcius, which is not even very hot. That got me suspicious, I went online and found a store that sells silicone specificly. I visited them, got some real silicone pipe, that cost 3 times the plastic pipe, and also looked different (more opaque, white coloured rather then plain transparent). I was also told that plastic pipes burn, and become sooty black, also stink when burning while real silicone turns white in fire, and doesn't burn that much. Good to know. But real silicone feels and looks so different now it will be easy to tell without the fire test. It is heat resistant to about 180 degrees C and food safe. Also, rubbers generally are not food safe, so I got some silicone pipe pieces in different sices so I can cut O rings off them easily to serve as sealents for my gear. For example I got an angle valve as a tap, I which I figured will work great, because it can be disassambled, so clogging can be removed, but also has a filter in it, in case I need extra filtration, and it had rubber seal on the inside! These rubber seals often smell. But even if they don't they are produced from oil, so they are basically a special kind of plastic. Not heat resistant, not food safe, and they wear off easily, and loose pieces of themselves. So I replaced those with silicone for example. Now my gear is food grade.
On the pictures, the silicone tube is on the right, held with the plier, after the burning test.

Basic ON/OFF type eletric temperature controller DIY

I have been using an electric kettle from the start. The kettle worked great, especially with the BIAB method, but I quickly realized that turning it on and off manually while going through my regular step mashing, was just too much work. Now, most people would just upgrade to an all in one system like grainfather, hopcat, klarstein mundschenk or others, which I believe must be great, but for DIYer afficionados like myself, a spark in our eyes appear when a challenge like this arises. I think the greatest advantage to solving our technical/equipment needs by building them on our own is the possibility to scale in the future, but one can save on the costs as well, and of course we learn new things and enjoy the process.

Important notice! To work with electric equipment described in this blog post you must have a good practical understanding of electricity and safety. If you have no training and experience in this field, you must find a professional to help you with your project. Electricity can cause death, fires and can be extremely dangerous with the amount of electric power needed even in a home brewery.

There are in fact literally hundreds of well described electric controller builds online - another great thing about the DIY solution is, that you can fit the equipment to your needs. For example, I'd love to use an all in one system like the grainfather, but I can not boil just with electricity, around here it costs more and it takes so much amps, that the wiring of the house needs to be in a pretty good shape for that. Instead while I do my step mashing with electric heating, and have a great control, for boil, I just switch to gas and support it with a lower performance electric element.

More sophisticated electric controllers include those built on Arduino or Raspberry 'computers', while the more simple, like mine have a readily bought thermostat with the additional electronics that enable it to be used for high power required to heat water. The sky is the limit, with the more complicated digital controllers you can manage the brewing process from wifi or bluetooth devices, record data, set mash regimes, etc., you can also manage pumps, and literally anything. The Brewtroller, BrewPi, SmartPID (and more.. ) are awesome products specialized on this kind of equipment.

Many recomend the PID controllers, for a thermostat. These controllers can proportionally adjust the heating power of a heating element based on the changes picked up by the thermometer, turning it on and off extremely fast in split seconds. Through complicated calculations it smoothes out the curves of temperature change. For these controllers, solid state relays must be used to turn the heating on and on so quickly. Mechanical relays are slower and wear out quickly.

The most basic controllers are the ON/OFF controllers, which turn on when the measured temperature is below the set temperature. This will result in a little overheating, but the problem can be avoided simply if the goal temperature is set lower, after just one brew on your set-up you will know how much it will go above the set temperature. It is only 2-3 degrees celcius in my case.

I chose a simple build because I was really focusing on getting the job done: helping my process with the ease of setting the mash step temperatures on digital panel, and letting the electronics decide when the heating element needs to be turned on and off. All I need to do is set a timer, and set re-set the temperature between the steps. The most simple thermostat on the market is the STC-1000, and comes for about 10 euros. The problem with it that it takes a maximum of 10 Amps. I am on 220 Volts, and my heating element is 2200 watts. That results in exactly 10 amp when fully on (my heating element is adjustable too), but when it turns on, it will actually draw more power than that, also a system must not be designed to function on the edge of it what it can possibly take safely.

Almost all temp controllers need to be set up with additional relays, that can handle more power. For a simple ON/OFF system with the STC, mechanical relays will do fine, they do not get turned on and off very frequently, so they will not wear out anytime soon, and they don't need to operate with the speed of light like solid state relays, altough those could be used as well.  In fact, it might be easier to find an SSR rated for high amps then a mechanical one, plus the socket for the connections. The most important thing is that the relays need to be rated for higher power, 16 amps in my case.

For my setup, I don't use the cooling socket at all, but I can imagine in the future, if I add recirculation, it will become useful. Also this way this controller can be used for fermentation control as well, and I actually built two of them for this reason. Basically it is very similar to an inkbird, but with the capacity to take the amps required by an efficient heating element (I am unaware but there might be inkbird products out there for high power too). For the cooling socket I did not add a relay, because I have a small fridge that will not draw much power, however, one has to keep in mind, that they will draw much more power for a short time when turning on, and that's exactly what will happen, from time to time, the temp controller will turn it on.

For the temperature probe, I soldered it on a jack plug, and added a jack socket on the box. This is a nice feature, because I expect the first thing to wear our will be the temperature probe.

List of materials needed:

- STC-1000 temperature controller
- Waterproof plastic junction box, cable glands
- 2x IP 44 outlet sockets
- 1x 16 amp relay + socket
- 2x indicator lights
- Wires, joiners,  power plug
- 1x mono jack socket + plug

Note: the total cost for me was about the equivalent of 40 Euros.

And the wiring diagram :
(When wiring your own project, you must ask for help from a professional if you are unsure about anything, and keep safety a number one priority!)



Pictures:





Resources that I used:

Fish tank temperature controller with STC-1000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pyfLyn6Ayk
STC 1000 and Maxi Cooler Project by "Oak House Brewery": http://www.brew.x10.mx/STC1000Project.html

And of course, you can find tons of information about the STC-1000 if googled.

Thank you for reading! For any infomartion please feel free to contact me.

One beer.

I'll just put this 2018 November homebrew here for purely aesthetic purposes. Brewed with roasted chestnut, malted lentils, and buckwheat.

What is this about?

This is blog will be dedicated to some Celiac stuff, Gluten free homebrewing, DIY for homebrewing, malting, perhaps some baking, growing gluten free foods, some food science, etc, anything related. No serious intentions, just sharing some of what I do, with some useful information in it hopefully, and a way to keep track of my own stuff.