If you crack your own grains (and I recommend you do- see my opinion why), here are a couple of tidbits I’ll pass on that I learned the hard way. They both have to do with roller adjustment. When I first got my grain mill, the instructions suggested getting a set of feeler gauges to set/adjust the roller gap to, in order to define your grain crush. I thought this was a superfluous detail and I would just eyeball it. I found after my first setting was too large that it was actually quite hard to tell by eye if the gap was the right size to crack the barley husk without pulverizing it to dust.
Really the only way to tell was to run a batch of grains through and look at what was coming out the other side. If too much or not enough, adjust accordingly. Making these adjustments by eye was quite tedious as I would continually overshoot or undershoot my mark. In the end, my efforts to try to simplify things by skipping the feeler gauges was actually making it harder for me. So I bought a set and figured out what seemed to be the right setting.
In the process of these adjustments, I got burned by the lock nuts on the adjustable roller. The mill was set up with a dial on both ends of one roller to dial it in closer or further away from the other roller. Then it had two locking screws to turn in tight to keep the roller in position. Stupidly, these locking screws have a nut threaded onto them, that cause you to bottom out your tightening screw against the nut and not actually be locking the roller into position. I found this out after seeing a batch of kernels go through and not actually get crushed properly.
I have no idea the intended purpose of these nuts. I had initially thought they were to keep your adjustment screws from backing out once you locked them in, but that’s not the case. They way they’re set up, they only function to prevent you from fully locking your adjustable roller into place, but don’t prevent your roller from backing out and increasing the gap as you grind. So word of advice, just back these nuts way off and get them out of your way so you don’t get burned like I did.
I added some rice hulls to help avoid a stuck mash with such a fine crush and was prepared for brew day. 
grain processing you find little bits of bonus grain bits that you can filter out (grain stock other than the kernel), but this time I found an unknown hop pellet sitting in my package of grains. 
I have no idea what type it was, how old it was, etc. I just know I was glad I found it and it didn’t get ground up to be a bonus/mystery flavor in my Scotch Ale. Making a small 2.5 gallon batch that was also low in IBU, one hop pellet could make a noticeable difference.
If you’re doing a multi-temperature mash by adding heat to your mash tun, you need to be wary of heat plumes fooling your thermometer. I have an 8 gallon pot with a false bottom that I use for my mash tun. When I do a multi-temperature mash, I monitor the temperature of the grain/water mash as I’m adding heat. Occasionally I’ve been thrown into a panic as my temperature seemingly shot past my target temperature.
Draught Horse Brewing has a nice set-up. In a spot on its own surrounded by some woods it has a kind of peaceful feeling even though it’s just West of a busy business center area at a major I-96 exit. We went at night to try some beers on a Thursday night and found it to be quite busy. They had what looked like a very interesting food menu, but they also had a great list of beers on tap. There were many that I wanted to try so it was tough to figure out a starting place. A wide range of styles to appeal to all beer drinkers for sure. The beers were all very well made with great flavors. I had some awesome IPAs and Pale Ales with some awesome fruity hops.
that I never would’ve thought of. It was a long slice of jalapeno
formed. One for the enthusiasts (gates open at 12:00), and one for the general admission (gates at 1:00 pm). As we kept walking and walking we were blown away at how long the line was for the enthusiasts. There were probably 500 – 600 people in front of us, out of the total 6,500 people that would be attending that day. Luckily they did a good job of pre-checking IDs, so once Noon came along, the line zipped right along.
