Friday, April 8, 2011

My Review of the NutriMill Electric Grain Mill

I've had the chance to put my new NutriMill Grain Mill through its paces over the last couple of days. Here's what it looked like when I took it out of the box.



The NutriMill is larger than I expected it to be. It's nearly as large as my Kitchenaid stand mixer.

You load the grain in the top of the mill. Experienced users of the NutriMill will note that I had the ring of the hopper installed upside down in the following photo. Oops! As you can tell, I have giant amounts of mechanical aptitude.


The hopper prominently warns against grinding oily seeds. There is an extensive list of banned items in the owner's manual, including oatmeal of any kind, nuts, and sprouted grains/seeds. Luckily, my Wonder Junior Deluxe's sets of steel burrs and stone heads will work just fine for those materials.

When you turn on the NutriMill, you might be surprised by the noise. Picture, if you will, a Shop Vac.
Imagine the noise that would ensue if you attempted to vaccum up a pack of yowling feral cats with said Shop Vac. That is pretty much what the NutriMill sounds like.

Should that discourage you from buying a NutriMill? Well, that's up to you and your tolerance for yowling feral cats. The good news is that the NutriMill works quickly, so you don't have to listen to it for very long. In 60 seconds, I had ground enough wheat to make a loaf of bread. That would have taken me about 7 minutes of constant grinding with the Wonder Mill Junior. I enjoy the sound of the Wonder Mill Junior, though. There's something therapeutic about hearing those stone heads grind against each other. The NutriMill's yowling? Not so therapeutic.

The freshly ground flour is collected in the bowl at the bottom.


I set it to grind on its finest setting. The end result was indeed finer than what my Wonder Junior can achieve. I made both a loaf of bread and a batch of pancakes with the flour and they turned out wonderfully.

The only issues I had during my experimentation occurred when my legendary mechanical aptitude got involved. The manual instructs you to first mill 2 cups of grain and discard it. I dumped out my test batch of flour and got ready to grind more wheat. The problem was that I forgot to put the flour bowl back in before I turned on the mill. Flour sprayed everywhere! That flustered me enough that when I finally did get the bowl installed, I didn't slide it in all the way. By the time I cleaned up the resulting flour-fest in my kitchen, I more resembled a powdered donut than a happy homemaker.

My personal issues aside, the NutriMill does a great job. It is noisy but quick, and it produces very nice flour. I recommend it!

2 comments:

  1. Oh yes ... the NOISE! If I ever need a moment of Mama Alone Time, I just whip out the Nutrimill ... the family is sure to scatter ;-)

    If it's any consolation, I have had a few powdered donut moments, too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sorry you're not in love with it as much as I am. The noise is quite loud, but I agree with Courtney (gets rid of the kids for a few minutes). I have had mine for over two years. While grinding some beans for bean flour a few weeks ago, it just stopped. I mailed it in, they fixed it for free and sent it back. Their customer service is great!! I really do like it a lot. I hope you learn to love it too!

    ReplyDelete