Everyone deserves a Healthy Kitchen

What You Need to Know Before Purchasing a Grain Mill or Flour Mill

Manual Flour Mill vs. Electric Flour Mill

Click here to order a Grain Mill

There are many things to consider before making your final selection when purchasing a grain milll. A list of questions I would consider are as follows:

1. Do I want a manual or electric grain mill?

• If I want a manual grain mill, do I really have time to hand grind all the time?
• If I want an electric flour mill, do I want to have the option to hand grind when needed?

2. What will I be using the flour from my flour mill for? (It's important to know this, as the grind consistency produced by many grain mills is not fine enough or course enough for some applications.)

3. Is a noisy flour mill going to bother me? (Some flour mills are very loud, particularly impact chamber mills

4. Will flour dust from my grain mill be an issue?

5. What is my price range?

One of the most popular electric grain mills are the Nutrimill.  For manual flour mills, the Family Grain Mill and Back to Basics Mill are two of the most popular. I will list each one with it's high points, and low points to help you select which flour mill will work best for your application.

Electric Grain Mills

The Nutrimill Wheat Grinder is the premium of the electric grain mills. Priced at $379.50 Canadian, this flour mill can grind very fine flour and also has a little more adjustability than the Wondermill Grain Mill (older Whispermill) or the Blendtec Wheat Grinder on the course side, as the Nutrimill can grind as course as a corn meal consistency. Quieter than other mills like the Magic Mills on noise level. This flour mill will grind pretty much all non-oily grains, and has no manual option, though the manufacturer has considered making one. It is just not available yet. This Grain mill has a 20 cup capacity, stainless steel grinding blades and a self cleaning milling chamber.

See online video at Fine Cooking Magazine who featured the Nutrimill in their Dec/Jan 2009 edition

Manual Grain Mills

The Family Grain Mill is German made and of high quality. This manual grain mill's advantages lie in it's ease of use. The Family Grain Mill is the easiest to turn grain mill we have ever tried. Some manual grain mills are so hard to turn that you feel like you need to be a muscle builder to use them. The Family Grain Mill is so easy to use that even a 7 or 8 year old child could do it. The output is  1 cup per 2-3 minutes of fast grinding, but is done with a lot less effort.The Family Grain mill also has a huge advantage in price. Another advantage to this grain mill is that it is modular, so VERY easy to motorize by adding it to your Bosch Universal. You have the option of buying a hand crank base,  grain mill attachment, and flaker mill attachment. These attachments will fit onto the Bosch Bread Mixer with an adaptor, which will save you a ton of money if you already have a Bosch Mixer. Very versatile, as you can see. The Family Grain Mill does not grind as finely as our electric mills , but on the finest setting, the flour is still acceptable for bread making. Not recommended for pastry flour. Perfect for the person who wants to grind flour easily by hand, but wants an easy way to motorize the unit, or the flexibility to add other attachments.   We have also added the Schnitzer Mill which will also mill fine flour but only by hand.

The Back to Basics Grain Mill is only recommended for those doing smaller amounts of grinding, or for those who only want a course grind. This Wheat Mill will grind flour, but not as finely as the mills listed above.  This mill is a great emergency mill as it is low in cost yet will make flour with only one grind.