Wheat Grinders - what about a coffee grinder?

I've been looking at wheat grinders (aka, mills) lately.  First I look at what I have in the house.

The Vitamix we got a year ago said it makes flour.  Well, it's kind of coarse - and it seems that it is either all done that way or with big pieces.  That is, you can't simply grind all to various levels of coarseness.

My under $50 coffee grinder does a good job on coffee, though it is messy.  As it recently broke, I found out that this model is criticized for 'coffee dust'.  I have tried grinding grain in it in the past - which might be responsible for it breaking.  I cleaned the unit and then grinded (sp?) rice to clean it more and then tried the wheat.  Not much better than the Vitamix - and a real hassle to go from coffee to wheat.

By the way, I found that wheat berries (particularly the hard varieties) are harder than coffee and as the coffee grinder is meant for coffee - it's not meant for grain.  Also, we use teaspoons of coffee at a sitting - but cups of flour.   As I shopped on line for coffee grinders, I found that very few even talk about grain grinding.

I do have a hand crank grain grinder.  It is what I use to make fine flour and course ground wheat.  It does fine, but takes a lot of time.  I could buy a motor that connects where the crank connects, but no, I don't think it is good enough to invest more into.  And, the idea of being able to grind wheat even if there is no power seems to be the main attraction.  Yes, buying a motor doesn't eliminate the ability to crank it by hand, but as I said, it's not so great that it should serve as my every day mill.

added - As other 'grinders' in our house do much better for fine ground wheat, I tried the hand cranker for course ground wheat.  I put this into my whole wheat bread to give it more texture.  I soak it before mixing up the final dough - so it is moist.  The hand grinder does well - when set right - and makes pretty quick work of a couple cups of wheat berries.  So - for the preppers or those with a small budget - don't overlook the hand cranker.  Use your energy in the kitchen - not in the gym.

This hand cranker seems to be a steel roller style mill.  Others are ceramic or stone wheels and are either flat or conical grinders.  From what I read, the state of the art (for coffee or wheat) is conical burr style.  The burrs can be made of steel or ceramic or stone.  As I understand it, the heads do not (or should not) ever touch, but, by decreasing the space between the two heads (one of which moves and one is static) a finer flour is attained.  I don't know what would happen if the harder wheat berries were used in this small space.

The home wheat mills can also be steel or stone or ceramic heads.  The move very fast.  Most mills say that you start the motor and then add the wheat so you are slowly (relatively) increasing the burden on the heads.

They say that excess heat during milling will kill some of the nutrients of the wheat.  But, a couple sites said that by introducing refrigerated or frozen berries, you overcome the heat issue.  Other issues include noise, size of machine, and fineness of flour - though most will create fairly fine flour.

As said in a previous post, many flours are blends of several (or at least a couple) types of wheat in order to obtain certain characteristics (protein for example) in the flour.  When you mill your own flour, you don't have access to a whole bunch of different types of berries (or a chemist to measure certain qualities) so you get out of the mill the flour from the grain you load in the top.  And, there is some variety - probably field to field and surely farmer region to farmer region - in wheat berries from different sources.   So, although it is difficult to get a variety of characteristics from a batch of wheat berries once milled, you do get what you get.  It is important to use those characteristics to the best advantage.

So, my search for a coffee grinder ended up with two solutions:  A) a replacement part for the part broken in my flat burr coffee grinder, in part, because I don't know the long term solution, and B) I purchased a hand cranking well reviewed conical burr coffee grinder.  This hand cranker is known for the ability to make very fine coffee grounds, but has a shortfall when grinding more coarse grounds for a french press or drip coffee maker.

And, I have given up in a grinder that can handle coffee beans AND hard wheat berries.

In the future, I think, is a grain mill to grind fine bread flour from whole berries IF I can develop recipes/processes that will result in whole wheat bread that has great flavor, great crumb and crust and great appearance while being good for the eater.  If it was as tasty as current recipes with more than 50% whole wheat flour - it would be a winner.  But, that discovery is yet to be found.