Mesquite Enterprise Ground to a Halt
Originally uploaded by mikeysklar
I had high hopes for wild harvesting and selling mesquite beans on-line this year. Sadly the burr coffee grinder I chose to mill our mesquite in a fine meal is not going to be the right solution. It quickly clogs up from heat requiring that I go in and clean the grind plates. Last year I used a hand held blade based coffee grinder which had no trouble making mesquite into flour. The drawback to the hand held grinder is that it has a limited capacity.
2 comments:
I dunno, would an old blender do the trick? Blades in those aren't terribly sharp and might crack the seeds/beans into pieces similar to the process behind a handheld coffee grinder... Assuming you use a bladed coffee grinder.
Then maybe dump it into a strainer with holes of a size to keep the bigger chunks for re-grinding. That way you won't waste time fussing too much over the consistency of each grind. Sometimes kitchen strainers come in various perforation sizes, or you might make something out of nylon window screening material. It's fairly cheap and not prone to rusting and flaking off like metal screening of old.
If the blender seems too inefficient, I'd suggest trying a secondhand Cuisinart (food processor) but they have sharp cutting blades and I'm afraid it might result in mesquite butter, not mesquite flour.
There's a giant hammermill that gets brought up every fall from Tucson to Phoenix. Folks just bring their mesquite beans, I think they ask for something like $5 per 5 gallon bucket full...
I grind mine with a stone matate. The long flat kind, not the mortar and pestle one. A bit old school and labor intensive, but it works. I just planted 2 new honey mesquites this year so that should double our bean harvest soon. :)
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