grinders

[johninfla]

What do y'all use to grind your corn for grits/polenta/cornmeal?

I bought a cheap victoria hand grinder at the latin market. It seems to work well enough but I don't do a whole lot of grinding...yet.

John

[oxbowfarm]

We have a Country Living mill that we like very much. Have not done a lot of cornmeal in it but it works well with what we have done. To grind corn you have to buy the "large auger" assembly so it feeds into the plates properly. We like the mill very much for our flour grinding, I am still in the dream phase of making a pedal-operated power unit for more efficient grinding and other tasks, something along the lines of the Rodale Energy Cycle. A nice thing about the Country living is that the flywheel is grooved for a standard v-belt so it is easy to motorize etc. The victoria/corona mills are at a much lower price-point however, which is attractive.

[spacecase0]

I have the Country Living Grain Mill
countrylivinggrainmills.com/
and it works perfect for everything

I kind of want to find a lower price grinder for making polenta so I can have a backup,
and polenta should be easier to grind than the pastry fine flour my current pricey mill can make

[kb]

Hi You can use the cheaper hand mills to produce flour or a finer corn meal by regrinding several times. I have a few friends who have Corona mills who do this and seem to be happy with it.

[johninfla]

I think I will be happy with what I have....I only have to grind for my family and not all of our grits/polenta/corn meal is from our garden.....yet

John

[mnjrutherford]

I am on the lookout for a couple of mill stones. Considering how many mills have existed, seems I should come across them eventually.

[Walk]

We have a Diamant mill that was purchased about 1978 or so. It still has its regular grind steel plates and has been used several times per week for over 30 years (I haven't bought commercially ground flour since owning this mill). We added a motor to it about 20 years ago, other than that we've done nothing to it but occasional cleaning and lubricating. The auger has notched "teeth" which helps to precrack grain as it goes into the grinder plates. We've ground acorns, buckwheat, barley, corn of all kinds, amaranth, sorghum, wheat, rye, rice, millet, and oats with this mill and also weird stuff like sugar (to make organic powdered sugar for bee hives) and grains for chicken feed.

We also have an antique C.S. Bell mill that has grinding "cones" rather than flat disks. We use it for wet grinding corn for masa. And lastly, we have the next to the smallest Porkert poppy seed mill which we use for all sorts of oily seeds in addition to poppy. We used to have a Corona mill for seeds and wet grinding, but it was hard to disassemble and clean after that kind of use. Worked OK, particularly for course grinding of grains or making a pasty grind of oily seeds (is was faster than the Portkert for this use).

[12540dumont]

Good to know. There's a lot of mills out there that will NOT grind Flint corn.

I have an old CS Bell that we use to rough grind corn (Flint & Flour types). I then bought a 20 dollar coffee grinder. I put the rough stuff through a cup at a time and sift. The rough stuff makes polenta, the fine stuff I use as flour or corn meal, depending on the type of corn.

I was planning on buying a new mill this year, but it looks like the tiller will get the lion's share of the cash. So, I'm going to buy a second $20 mill. This way when #1 is cooling down, I can use #2.

I've gone through about 50 pounds of corn for my CSA. I've another 50 to go. It really has helped me bridge the season.