Is milling or grinding grains required for making moonshine

[ly44889]

Do I need to mill or grind malted barley and malted rye for making shine? If so, what can I use to make it the right consistency. Thank you.

[dieselduo]

Depends on what you are trying to make.Go to the tried and true and pick out a recipe. Look at UJSSM , you only use cracked corn there. No need for a mill.

[JellybeanCorncob]

Do I need to mill or grind malted barley and malted rye for making shine? If so, what can I use to make it the right consistency. Thank you.

Most if not all home brew shops have a mill you can grind the grains you just bought for free or a small fee. I’m sure the brew shop can help you get the proper grind.
Good luck to you.
JBC

[fizzix]

Do I need to mill or grind malted barley and malted rye for making shine? If so, what can I use to make it the right consistency. Thank you.

Predominantly the answer is yes, grind that grain.
Some exceptions are flaked grains (grains that have been pre-cooked to expose starch) or recipes that state not to grind adjuncts, like the corn in Uncle Jesse's Simple Sour Mash (as dieselduo pointed out).

The point of grinding most adjuncts and malts is to expose as much of the grain surface area as possible. Sometimes recipes (mostly beer) will even specify to double mill or finely mill the grains. But rare.
As also stated, most any grain source will have a mill available for "standard" grind.

This will freak some purists out, but before I found my current grain shop, I bought grains for Honey Bear Bourbon from a vendor who didn't offer milling and I ran them through my drink blender.
Yep, that pulsed "ice crusher" setting and the Honey Bear came out just fine. LAST RESORT!

[Bushman]

The grain should be crushed, this allows the starches, sugars, and enzymes inside the grain to be extracted. Without the starches, sugars, and enzymes, you're going to find it difficult to make beer.

[Kareltje]

The grains of grain, corn or seed should be milled or crushed to release the contents of the cells and make these available for conversion and fermentation. For dry grains one uses milling.
I make grains sprout and after that I use a household blender to destroy the soft whole grain in a watery environment. Then I brew it with cooked milled grains.
One way or the other: the contents of the cells must be available for processing.
This goes too for fruit, by the way.

[raketemensch]

If you’re just getting started, then a sugar wash like UJSSM or Sweet Feed might be a good first step. In those cases you don’t need to grind anything, and you can make some tasty liquor.

Once you get the distilling part down, you can pursue all-grains and grinding malts.

Obviously it’s up to you which path you take, but there’s a big learning curve here, and you can only focus on so much at once.

[Mike6090]

To look at it another way the grain is coated with a waterproof “armor” jacket that helps the grain naturally in germinate and prevents starch from escaping. You have to crush, cut or smash that armor plate to get your hot water and enzymes into the starch to react and turn it to sugar. Then you can Mash it in a mash tun and sparge the sugary grain tea.

[acfixer69]

To look at it another way the grain is coated with a waterproof “armor” jacket that helps the grain naturally in germinate and prevents starch from escaping. You have to crush, cut or smash that armor plate to get your hot water and enzymes into the starch to react and turn it to sugar. Then you can Mash it in a mash tun and sparge the sugary grain tea.


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[Mike6090]

Thanks for the reply. It’s very frustrating to try to be a part of a community and your device requires you to use tapatalk which constantly resets itself to violate the terms of the community. The other option seems to be to input your name and password each and every time you log on.

[Expat]

Requires Tapatalk? errrr just say No? works fine for me.

Friends don't let friends use Tapatalk.

[acfixer69]

Requires Tapatalk? errrr just say No? works fine for me.

Friends don't let friends use Tapatalk.

Now is that hard

[Mike6090]

I hear ya. My iPhone has other opinions and I don’t own a desk top anymore so I have to deal with the second fiddle of an internet device. Still, it gets the job done when it doesn’t throw a hissy fit.

Apologies to the OP for the thread hijack.

[jonnys_spirit]

I would say yes - you need to either grind your grains - or have them ground for you.

Search up Corona mill mods and you can get a cheap enough mill going that will chew through corn and other malts...

I would recommend AG over sugar wash based recipe. Cheaper for an all-corn and better product to boot!

Cheers!
-j

[ly44889]

Thank you all. Good stuff. Definitely gonna run a sugar wash first, but all the reading on here has got my gears turning for future spirits without getting too far ahead of myself. Alot of info on here.