Victoria Manual Grain Grinder with High Hopper, Grain Mill for Kitchen Use, Made in Colombia

The media could not be loaded. This little inexpensive hand Molino produced about as fine as possible at home masa. Masienda has an electric Molino for around $2000..and while tempting, I do not make enough masa to justify buying one. I have used my meat grinder and food processor and have gotten good results. But honestly, using this little grinder gave me a nice smooth masa to make masa fina for tortillas. I added water after grinding my nixtamal, balled up for pressing and turned out some very nice pliable tortillas. I buy Masienda corn and am very happy to have the flavor of Mexico in my kitchen. this is old school cooking. Using some arm strength and a little time and planning you can get a delicious nutritious corn tortilla.

It is doing its job

I bought this to crack corn for my yard birds, especially my cardinals, they love cracked corn. Corn kernels are very hard and they were taking a toll on my Nutri Bullet. It arrived on time. It is cast iron so it's pretty heavy. The separate pieces don't fit well in the box as you can see from the photo, however, it did arrive in an additional bigger box. The pieces have a shiny coating, which I fully expect to chip off with use. This one already had a couple chipped areas upon arrival. I really don't mind because I prefer the cast iron rustic look anyway but I will run a bag or two of dry beans through initially to encourage that coating to wear down. I don't want to feed the coating to my birds. The instructions are clear and assembly was easy, took about 15 minutes. You will need a place to mount it to the edge of a table, counter, or work bench so keep that in mind, it is not free standing. Once assembled, I gave it a whirl. I had to use some elbow grease to get the handle all the way around. Mostly I ended up rocking it back and forth to grind, which wasn't a surprise to me because I have ground corn before. It is a bit of a work out but I'm a country girl and I don't mind the effort. The task should become easier with use and oiling. If you aren't into elbow grease, spend the extra money and purchase an electric one. This is not going to give you a fine mill, like flour, it's not designed for that. But it will crack course grains. Being cast iron, it will be susceptible to rust so I know it will require cleaning and oiling. The directions are very clear about that. I gave it an overall 4 because of the 1) chipped areas, 2) the coating (I would have preferred just plain ole cast iron but couldn't find one like that) and 3) the packaging it didn't fit in. It does deserve a 5 in one area though...it cracks corn to the perfect consistency I need for my cardinals. Overall, I am very happy with it so far. I will update if that changes.

Just as advertised

Let's be 100 per cent clear: this is NOT a dry grain grinder! Yes, you can use it to make peanut butter or grind coffee or even crack grains for cooking or brewing, but if you're looking for a flour mill my best advice is to buy an actual flour mill.This mill is intended to mill wet corn. It is very good at that.The very first thing to do out of the box is to wash the mill in hot soapy water. I like to put the mill body, front brace, auger/rotating burr and associated wing nuts spread out on a cookie sheet and put into a 250F oven for 20 minutes, then turn off the heat and let the oven cool. (I do not put the crank arm and wooden handle in the oven.) This helps insure that water is evaporated from the crannies where you can't reach with a towel.The very second thing to do is to get a couple of pounds of cheap generic pinto beans and grind them in the mill. The purpose of this is to remove any bits of the tin plating or machining swarf that may be left in the grinder. Throw out the ground beans because they will have metal bits in them.I grind masa three times through for best texture. I set the mill quite close for all three passes. I also made a "Masa Masher" wood pestle to push the masa down into the auger after the first pass. The website masienda.com has excellent videos about making masa; I encourage you to read and watch even if you think you know what you're doing.I took off the red plastic cover over the burrs. It's a good idea but masa tends to build up under the cover and squish out the back. This not only gets masa all over but it also partially blocks the burrs from clearing as you grind. I made an aluminum plate that fits just behind the stationary burr and is held on by the screws that hold down the brace. This allows masa to curl up but then fall into the pie plate I have under the burrs.Before each use, I recommend putting just a couple drops of vegetable oil onto the ball bearing inside the brace. That will help prevent wear in that spot, which gets a lot of pressure.I find an old toothbrush is handy for cleaning to get the masa out from where the stationary burr attaches to the front of the mill body. Leaving masa stuck in there risks mould, also rust.If you prepare the mill well, use carefully for the intended purpose and clean/dry well it should last for decades.

I couldn't get it to make flour even passing the wheat berries through a few times. Perhaps it was user error but it made a big mess to not easily make flour. I returned it. I am sure it works well for some uses but not for fine flour

Very well-made mill that will serve those who are willing to put in the work to grind grain. There’s not a more difficult grain than whole or split corn to mill into corn meal or virtually flour. It’s very hard and will put any mill to the test. Disregard the comment on finish of product. This is called tinning of metal in order to prevent corrosion. Also comments regarding cleaning are hard to determine why they are challenged, but it breaks down very simply, and is easy to clean. If you don’t want to work by an electric mill, but if you’re willing to put in the time, this converted a 50 pound split corn bag into cornmeal in two hours with two arthritic shoulders, so go figure.