Budget Friendly Grain Mill for 5-7 bbl brewhouse

[PorterBrewingCo]

Hi All, Sorry for making a new thread on this but after a couple days searching I just can't find any definitive answers.

Looking at the Crankandstein 328g or 328d mill for our soon to be brewery. These seem fairly straight forward and will help with the startup budget. I am very confident we can easily build the right size stand and hopper but having difficulty determing the following:

*What motor should I use? I saw recommendations for a 3/4hp and I would definitely want it to be explosion proof and run off 110v power. I'm having trouble finding suggestions that are not seriously over my budget, any suggestions would be very helpful, I believe it needs to run between 100-300rpm max.

*Any suggestions on how to connect the motor to the mill? Do I need to use a pully system or is there a direct drive?

Would love to hear thoughts from all of you breweries who had to start out this way. I plan on making a stand that has an enclosed cabinet, open the cabinet, stick the small garbage can in, close the door, fill up the can and move on to the next one.

Thanks again for any suggestions or help.

Ryan

[chronolite]

HEre's what we used for thousands of bbls on our 10bbl:

We used a regular TEFC 1hp motor with our 328 mill.

https://www.amazon.com/Worldwide-Ele.../dp/B00K8ED8TI

We used a 3 phase motor with a single-to-3 phase VFD that offers constant torque or you can use a gear reducer. We decided to use a gear reducer from surplus center:

https://www.surpluscenter.com/Power-...33-5-L-56C.axd

The 5:1 gear reducer will take a standard 4 pole motor (1800 RPM) and give you 360 RPM. If you buy a 2 pole (3600 RPM) motor, you will need to get a 10:1 reducer (obviously) slower motors run longer.

You'll need a couple of lovejoy couplers and keep some spare rubber inserts around (they always go out when you're in the middle of milling). You'll also need to fabricate some kind of way to hold this all together.

Hi All, Sorry for making a new thread on this but after a couple days searching I just can't find any definitive answers.

Looking at the Crankandstein 328g or 328d mill for our soon to be brewery. These seem fairly straight forward and will help with the startup budget. I am very confident we can easily build the right size stand and hopper but having difficulty determing the following:

*What motor should I use? I saw recommendations for a 3/4hp and I would definitely want it to be explosion proof and run off 110v power. I'm having trouble finding suggestions that are not seriously over my budget, any suggestions would be very helpful, I believe it needs to run between 100-300rpm max.

*Any suggestions on how to connect the motor to the mill? Do I need to use a pully system or is there a direct drive?

Would love to hear thoughts from all of you breweries who had to start out this way. I plan on making a stand that has an enclosed cabinet, open the cabinet, stick the small garbage can in, close the door, fill up the can and move on to the next one.

Thanks again for any suggestions or help.

Ryan

[PorterBrewingCo]

Thanks for the advice/info! Cheers!

[augiedoggy]

we use a 1/6hp gear reduction motor like this one
https://www.ebay.com/itm/BODINE-42R5...~D6h:rk:2:pf:0
direct drive using this

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-High-to...item4b0aca0249

using this mill

https://www.beveragefactory.com/home...rain-mill.html

monster mill hopper extension bolt right up to the kegco as we have a 3 roller MM3 for backup in case we run into any issues but the MM used cheap bushings which wear fairly quickly with this kind of use


We have it set up on a drum switch for forward/reverse operation of a kegco 3 roller homebrewing mill with hopper extension and its kind of slow at 180rpm but creates less dust and roller wear this way.
so far so good.
The kegco mills use real ball bearing unlike many of the cheaper made bronze bushing mills. its not ideal for larger brewhouses but it works well for us and our 3bbl setup and toatl cost with the wheeled cart and grain bins was about $400.

[ESBC]

Mill Rate

we use a 1/6hp gear reduction motor like this one
https://www.ebay.com/itm/BODINE-42R5...~D6h:rk:2:pf:0
direct drive using this

https://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-High-to...item4b0aca0249

using this mill

https://www.beveragefactory.com/home...rain-mill.html

monster mill hopper extension bolt right up to the kegco as we have a 3 roller MM3 for backup in case we run into any issues but the MM used cheap bushings which wear fairly quickly with this kind of use


We have it set up on a drum switch for forward/reverse operation of a kegco 3 roller homebrewing mill with hopper extension and its kind of slow at 180rpm but creates less dust and roller wear this way.
so far so good.
The kegco mills use real ball bearing unlike many of the cheaper made bronze bushing mills. its not ideal for larger brewhouses but it works well for us and our 3bbl setup and toatl cost with the wheeled cart and grain bins was about $400.

How many pounds per minute were you getting with this setup?

[augiedoggy]

How many pounds per minute were you getting with this setup?

well the motor is only 170rpm so its not all that fast Ive never times it to be honest but 8 months later it still looks new and works fine getting use every sunday.

[CraftAutomation]

I can get you an appropriate controller for the mill motor.