Milling your own grains...

[thunderwagn]

I've been taking advantage of that for a couple of years now from MoreBeer.. Even better is that you can mix and match your base malts by the 10 lb. bags and keep a smaller inventory than when ordering sacks. They also offer a decent discount on 5 lb. bags, so you can save on often used specialty malts too.
It's been about a year since most shippers put the surcharge on items 50 lbs. and over (or has it been 2), which makes the cost of sacks prohibitive if you're buying on line.

I honestly never paid attention till all the lhbs around here shut down (thanks covid). Now I've ordered several rounds of the 10# bags and have to say, they're very convenient.
Just recently I found out that a local brewery is an outlet for picking up our local Root Shoot malt, so here real soon I'll only have to purchase hops, yeast, and specialty grains online. Still more than I'd like to order but not much I can do about it.

 

[SabreSteve]

I've been taking advantage of that for a couple of years now from MoreBeer.. Even better is that you can mix and match your base malts by the 10 lb. bags and keep a smaller inventory than when ordering sacks. They also offer a decent discount on 5 lb. bags, so you can save on often used specialty malts too.
It's been about a year since most shippers put the surcharge on items 50 lbs. and over (or has it been 2), which makes the cost of sacks prohibitive if you're buying on line.

I definitely will mix and match but I think my go-to if I need more to reach the $59 free shipping threshold will be to just add another bag of 2-row

 

[Craigerrr]

I am fortunate to have two home brew shops about 20 minutes away. I pick up all of my ingredients. My homebrew club also has bulk buys fairly regularly, but that has been curtailed by the COVID

 

[Herm brews]

At “the old lhbs” I am able to weigh and mill my grains myself. It was here that I started double milling, which resulted in improved efficiencies. My other lhbs does all of the weighing and milling - they do not double mill, but their mill has a setting that works very well for my biab process (I just let them know that I use biab process). The old lhbs is open on Sunday, the new lhbs is not. I usually brew on Mondays.

 

[Medarius]

I used the same Victoria mill for several years. Actually still have it as a backup. I've had 2 different roller mills since and don't really see much difference among the 3.

Have same set up. I bought 2 Chard mills, while they were on sale for $20/ea, @ FleetFarm. These work great and are easy to adjust for different grains, which i have to do each brew day for wheat and barley. Not sure if I will ever need the second one, but nice to have a back up for sometime in the future, just in case

 

[BOB357]

I definitely will mix and match but I think my go-to if I need more to reach the $59 free shipping threshold will be to just add another bag of 2-row

I always order grains for 4 or 5 batches at a time, so the free shipping threshold isn't a problem. If I need to fill in a bit, there's always finings, yeast, or other odds and ends.

 

[SabreSteve]

I always order grains for 4 or 5 batches at a time, so the free shipping threshold isn't a problem. If I need to fill in a bit, there's always finings, yeast, or other odds and ends.

The problem for me is actually planning more than a couple batches out. I have no clue what I'm going to want to make in 3 months

 

[BOB357]

Guessing it helps that I seldom brew anything but APAs and IPAs. and also brew about twice a month.

 

[mrskittle]

Guessing it helps that I seldom brew anything but APAs and IPAs. and also brew about twice a month.

I'm with you. Keep the menu simple so you don't have to mess with a ton of different ingredients. It's also nice when you can use the same specialty malts in more than one brew. I use Munich 10 in my American wheat and IPA.

 

[Hawkbox]

I average 3 times a month brewing so I easily handle base malts, but I don't brew a lot of dark beers and bought a bunch of dark grains early on so I'm forcing myself to make dark beers to use it up.