Chefcaptain Manual Cast Iron Grain Grinder, Corn Grinder, Food Mill Hand Crank For Wheat Grains Nuts Grinds 1 Lb Per Minute

I am always looking for ways to become more self sufficient so when I came across this grinder I knew I had to have it. I grew corn this year and didn't pick it right away. Instead I left it on the stock to dry out so I could try grinding it by hand. This worked awesome to make grits just from the first grinding. I tightened the grinding plate and ran it through a second and even third time. This made it much finer so I could use it more like corn meal and makes awesome bread and pizza crust when I dust it on the pan. I also tried this with wheat berries and worked pretty well. Didn't end up very fine like normal flour would be but I didn't really expect it to be. Still made good, hearty, rustic type bread though. Pros: Cheap. Efficient. Uses no power. Very durable and well built. Cons: Heavy, wouldn't be good to carry with you if you needed to.

I bought this mill to grind my own grains for homebrewing. It is perfect for this purpose. I did make a couple minor adjustments. I added a few washers to give extra room for adjusting the spacing of the grinding plates. That might not have been necessary, but I had seen other people do it, and it meant I could fully tighten the wing nuts on either side to stabilize things a bit. When I first tried to tighten the wing nuts without the washers in place, it seemed too tight to be able to actually adjust the grinding plates. My other adjustment was finding a bolt that fits the spot where the handle attaches. Putting a bolt in there means I can use a drill with a socket attachment to run the mill instead of having to crank it by hand. So far, I haven't actually used a drill, because I realized I didn't have a socket attachment for my drill. Doh! No problem though, because it didn't end up taking all that long to crank it by hand, and I could use the exercise. Also, I didn't mount it on a table or counter. I didn't want to mar the counter and I wanted a way to catch all of the grain easily. I cut slots big enough for a piece of scrap wood I had laying around to fit in the side of a bucket. Then I mounted the mill to the piece of wood. Works great. If you brew your own beer and want the extra level of control you get by grinding your own grains, this mill is just the thing. Having tried this one, I feel no need to upgrade to a roller mill even if I could afford it.

Finally got around to using this. It is not nearly as well built as my antique meat grinder. I would have given 5 stars if it fit together better. Had a hard time getting the hopper on and couldn't get it off. I just put it away with the hopper still installed. This was not very expensive, so it is hard to be too upset about the lack of fine tooling. It worked well. I am glad I read the other reviews. Make sure to do a coarse grind followed by a finer grind. I ground dried corn with a hardness similar to popcorn. I stopped just before all corn was ground the second time through because I didn't want metal filings in my corn meal. I would have stopped at that point using any grinder because it seems like common sense not to grind metal on metal. Doubt it will get passed down to my son. The meat grinder I got from grandma will still be working for my grandchildren. This should provide an estimate of the quality. For the price, it is adequate. If it wears out, I may try to find one that is more heavy duty. It is a good starter grinder.

I must agree with the person who said this is junk. After spending an hour grinding the mount smooth, replacing the ridiculous eyebolt and washer on the feed screw with a proper metric bolt, and playing around with the settings, I have to say that it's the lowest-quality most-primitive piece of kitchen gear I've ever seen -- "Premium Quality" is a fraudulent claim, but it does grind corn, sort of. Also fraudulent is the "Corona" brand name that Amazon still lists under the item name -- there's nothing in or on the box or the equipment that claims this is made by Corona. Some choice details, on the basis of hours of testing with dry flint corn: 1) There are two grinding discs, of course, one is fixed to the grinder case and the other is loosely driven by the crank. The grooves on both discs are cast, not ground, so they're very rough and inconsistent in depth, and there is no way to sharpen them. The movable disc is "floating", so it depends on the corn or wheat material to maintain its angle and spacing from the fixed disc. This almost works, but not quite -- it still lets a LOT of relatively large chunks of grain make it through, and in practice there is no way to completely avoid grinding metal against metal at times when there is very little grain going through. Fortunately, the discs are indeed ferrous (magnetic), so a few iron filings in your food probably won't hurt anyone, might even help some anemic folks. Still, fact is, "fine" grind is impossible, even after re-grinding ten times! 2) The shaft of the main feed screw attaches to the handle by a three-sided taper; both parts are cast, not machined. There are three positions you can use to attach the handle. In the first position I tried, the handle hit the hopper, as mentioned in another review, but when I moved to another position, the handle cleared the hopper and worked fine. I added a mark to the handle and the feed screw at the right position. 3) However, the eyebolt and dished washer that holds the handle on, were incredibly low quality. The hole in the shaft is tapped for an 8 mm bolt. Unfortunately the bolt was a very sloppy fit, measuring only 7.5 mm diameter, where it should really be about 7.9 mm. At least it was the right thread pitch. Anyway, I replaced the eyebolt and its flimsy washer with a decent-quality hex head bolt and thicker washer, and it now holds the handle on quite firmly. 4) On the cast-in clamp that holds the mill to a countertop or table, the top surface has a nasty seam that stuck out about a millimeter. This would put a deep groove in pretty much any countertop or table top that you might clamp onto. (The box warns about this.) So I spent a half-hour grinding off the seam with a bench grinder to make the top surface of the clamp nice and smooth. It now clamps very firmly, and holds the mill in place quite well using the enclosed rubber seat. 5) The hopper is ferrous, possibly stainless steel, but is not a good fit on the grinder input opening, so chunks of grain get stuck in the gap. Just a minor frustration, another drawback of the cheap casting. In summary, this knock-off the original Corona model 500 grinder is really pathetic, and would be a waste of time and money for almost anyone. Out of the box, it does not work acceptably, but if you are willing to spend an hour or two modifying the rough casting and replacing one of the bolts, it might work for you. Frankly, I'm sorry I bought the mill, but I think I've learned my lesson: if something on Amazon (especially one of their marketplace partners) seems impossibly cheap, don't order it!

Regarding the choice of supplier: From a good supplier, this mill is worth every cent. I needed a simple mill for homebrewing (and didn't want to spend the ballpark $200 required for a good roller mill) and came across this, with many reviews describing it as wonderful for that purpose. However, I also noted many reviews complaining of poor quality, excess packing grease, etc (things that would surely have shown up in the five-star reviews). Then I noticed that some of the five-star reviews mentioned that they'd gotten theirs from Discount Tommy. So, I waited until Discount Tommy had them in stock, bought from them, and all's been great. Now, I have no idea what other suppliers are good/bad. Discount Tommy probably isn't the only good one, but judging by reviews there are definitely some bad ones; going with the one known good supplier seemed safest. Regarding the product I received: I washed it with soap and water, dried it, and assembled it. Everything fit fine, though there are of course rougher areas (though the surface finish is fine everywhere) due to the fact that the mill was cast rather than machined. The hopper holds perhaps a pound of brewing malt (something I intend to upgrade). The base can screw directly onto a surface or be clamped onto anything ~2" thick or less. Other reviewers had noted that the mill could be driven by a drill; it was initially unclear how they'd done so, but my solution was to use a Dremel tool to open the eye of an eyebolt, put the threaded part of the eyebolt into my drill's chuck, and then hook my eyebolt to the eyebolt on the mill (important, probably obvious note--the mill handle was not installed for this). Even operating at I'm sure much greater speed than the manufacturer intended, the mill chews through grains. I use a piece of aluminum foil, formed over the upper section of the milling plates, to keep grain from being thrown everywhere. I first used mine clamped to a tabletop, but found that milling a 5 gallon batch's worth of grains to be difficult since I had to keep emptying the relatively small bowl that could fit under the milling plates. So the second time around, I affixed a 2x2 to my table that juts out beyond the surface, allowing me to use a makeshift chute to funnel the milled grains into my full-size collection vessel.

When I was looking around, for the money, this has been a very good buy. I've used it to grind dried chestnuts and any number of other grains to make multi grain flour (including rice, wheat, rye, corn, flax, barley, oats, quinoa, etc) - the flax needs to be ground with something else, or you just get a paste which is difficult to clean - It doesn't grind particularly finely... You do get some very fine flour, but without some serious sifting, it tends to come out mixed with some coarser cornmeal grade flour... It does make some very good nut butter for me (I usually use about 50% peanuts with a variety of other nuts - walnuts, pecans, etc). It's also ground dried beans into a sort of flour which I can reconstitute and cook to make a sort of refried bean dish. I'm sure it would grind coffee beans very well. However, if you want to use this for different products - using both oily things (like nuts) and dry things, it can be very difficult to get clean...or rather, it's painful having to loosen all of the screws etc just to get this to where you can clean it. On using the grinder, you do need a bowl to catch the product, and a tall one won't fit very well, while a shallow one allows more to spill out on the table. Also, I made a shield to keep too much from running out the top and over the sides rather than into my bowl. (I wound up using the bottom of an empty vinegar bottle as a bowl, and some of the extra plastic as a shield on top. You probably want a sieve or two to separate the finely ground product from the coarsely ground stuff. I know some other people had commented on the quality of the machining used to make this, and they're right... some of the parts don't seem to have been truly designed to connect with each other particularly well. The hopper fits, but with a bit of extra play. The main screw inside doesn't push all the whole grains though to be ground because there are some odd gaps between it and the sides/bottom. The grinder plate really has to be screwed in extra tightly to get a good powder, and it still lets a lot of coarser grind through. I wound up replacing some of the screws with my own plus washers, because what came with the grinder slipped through the holes, or eventually pulled through. Also, some dust (sometimes grain and sometimes what looks like metal flakes) tends to fall behind the grinder where the handle attaches. This is more pronounced when trying to re-grind the coarsely ground bits. I wouldn't recommend using this on a kitchen table or counter, as in order to tighten the screws enough to keep it from wobbling, you also run the risk of the poorly shaped metal bits gouging into your wood. Bottom line: It works well to make peanut butter, and that's what I still use it for mostly. It also works well to make coarse flour, and since I like my breads a bit toothier, that's mostly ok too. It makes a bit of a mess, and is pretty bulky to store or to clean. I'd recommend some kind of stone grinder rather than this for high quality flour, and given a choice between this and a slightly more expensive, but better made product, I'd definitely spend a little bit more in the future.

Victoria makes and sells exactly what they claim...a corn grinder that will make grits, cracked corn and with several passes and some sifting, corn meal and fine flour (combined, hence sifting is required). When someone calls their own grinder a corn grinder don't expect it to produce fine, fluffy wheat flour. I sure didn't. If they made one they would call it the Victoria Fine Fluffy Wheat Flour Mill! So why do some of you buy this thing to mill wheat flour? Grinding and milling are not the same. "Premium quality" is what is called an "Advertising or Marketing claim"...beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Likewise "Premium Quality". It does exactly what it claims, so I gave it a 5 star rating but I had to perform some 'post production' finishing. The metalic paint was so heavy that it interfered with the bench clamp(not really such a bad thing)and it also interfered with the clamp screw initially. A little working of the screw solved that. So yes, the finish on the product is a little rough, but heck, it was made in Columbia so give our friends and neighbors in South America a break-it's ain't Cocaine and they are trying to make an honest buck selling a simple, honest product. It's what makes 'The Americas" great! My bet is there are tens of thousands women in Columbia who are thrilled to get this thing so they don't have to grind their corn with one of those miserable lava stone grinding things from Mexico...now that's HARD WORK. I actually bought this thing to try and see if I could use it to crack and shell Sunflower seeds that I grow, but the squirrels got my entire crop so I don't know yet about that one. I will report back if that is successful next season, but my bet is that it will do exactly that with some tweeking. As always Amazon was outstanding. I appreciate the fact that they track my computer shopping forays and send me spectacular offers and discounts. If you register on the site and spend some money occasionally I'm sure they will do the same for you. Got this puppy for $19.95 and free freight when I added a book I needed. Are you kidding me? Always Amazing Amazon! If you own a brick and mortar store be afraid, be very afraid. Sell it and become a farmer...that's what I did. Then you can buy all your gear through Amazon at better than wholesale...the wave of the future is here, learn how to surf.

This is just perfect for milling barley or anything you want to crack. I have played with it to get the gap set right, and it works perfect. The shop where I buy my grains can grind grains for free, but now I don't need to grind the whole pile up front and take a chance of them losing freshness. I can now by in the much cheaper bulk sacks, which are not ground for free. As for the item, it's very basic, but very well built. The bolt that holds it to the counter is correctly sized for the item, and the bolt that holds the crank can be replaced with a hex head for using a drill. I pulled the M8x1.25 bolt out and replaced it with a hex head. Now, I can use a drill to mill around 20 pounds of barley in around 20 minutes. It doesn't have a shield, but I just use a plastic container cutout over the outlet. This wouldn't be needed, but with the electric drill, it can really fly out! For 20 bucks, this is really a very good deal. Just remember, since it's cast iron, don't wash it unless you absolutely have to. If you don't dry it out thoroughly, you will get some surface rust. BTW, for reference, the aluminum hopper holds around 2 pounds of barley. It's money well spent.

DO NOT BUY THIS - Just look at the image this thing is a health and safety hazard, the paint kept coming off with the food, mind you it was supposed to look green…. Nothing fixes this, we tried scrubbing it. It will always keep coming off.

Je suis déçu par ce produit j'ai l'impression de mettre fait arnaquer. N'arrive même pas à écraser l'arachide sans avoir les morceaux dans la pâte. En plus, il y a les débris du métal utilisé dans la pâte. Vraiment déçu! Je sélectionne une étoile car c'est obligatoire d'en avoir sinon aucune étoile!!

The construction of this mill was to poor I had to try to force it together to get it assembled. The casting of the parts was poor and ultimately it didn't work at all. It was returned.

It does not work.