Glossary
Milling
Crushing malt so its starch is accessible to water while leaving the husks as intact as possible.
Also called grist mill, crush, malt mill.
The full record
Milling has its own catalogue entry with the detail this page summarises — causes, thresholds, related styles and evidence.
Milling — Crack the malt kernel so water can reach its starch, while leaving the husks intact enough to form a filter bed during lautering.
The compromise is the whole point. A finer crush exposes more starch and raises extraction, but produces a grain bed that will not run. A coarser crush lauters freely and extracts less. Roller mills exist rather than hammer mills precisely because they crack the kernel while preserving the husk.
Related
- Grist — The product of milling.
- Husk — What milling must preserve.
- Stuck sparge — What too fine a crush causes.
More vocabulary
Arrested fermentation · Barrel ageing · Batch sparging · Biotransformation · Blending · Bottle conditioning · Bottom fermentation · Burtonisation · Cask conditioning · Centrifugation
See every term on the glossary index.
Last reviewed 2026-08-16.