I have milled wheat for many years, with the help of my kids when they were growing up, and without their help when they were young and after they left home. I have used many types of mills, and have seen many kinds in action. This is an overview of the ones I've used.

I have an old Magic Mill, which is a sturdy and long lived thing, but which does not mill fine. It is great for meal, cracked grain, etc (though it does not produce evenly sized particles, it is always a mixture). These are workhorses that can always be repaired.

I also have a Blendtec, which is my favorite mill of all time (they may be calling it K-tek again). (This is the best price I've ever found on one, and this is a good company to buy from. Blendtec Grain Mill) I had one when they were K-tek, and wore it out - not because the motor or parts failed, but because it got dropped one to many times. That is their only drawback - the design makes them awkward to hold onto while you clean them, and my kids dropped the top. Some people complain of the noise but it has never really bothered me. This is an impact mill, requires almost no maintenance, just clean it each time and dust out the filter.

It mills very fine, and is fast. It does not do meal, though it will produce a slightly coarser flour. But I love the cake flour texture that it produces. Best flour from any mill I've ever owned, and I've owned a few! Also one of the most economical, price generally runs under $200.

The Whisper Mill we owned was garbage (badly designed, clogged, broke, and eventually the motor died after we had only owned it for about 2 years). Horrid thing. And just as loud as the K-tek. It had a curved tube running from the mill to the flour bin. BAD idea, you can't clean it. It cracked where it attached to the bin lid, and was not repairable. It also required resetting a breaker on the bottom of the unit from time to time. Not easy to do in the middle of a batch.

The K-tek knock off (Vita-Mill) was badly designed, they closed up the side vent, and put the filter somewhere else, but the motor still blew hot air on the plastic housing where they'd closed it off, so that melted, and the mill blew flour all over through the hole in the housing. It was not repairable, and happened after we'd owned it for only about a year. It also had a plastic hopper that sat on top of it, which was supposed to allow you to put more wheat in it at a time (the K-tek has a small hopper that only holds about 3 cups of wheat). Unfortunately when you actually put wheat into the hopper, it just spilled out at the bottom of the hopper where it sat on the top of the mill, because the hopper was not anchored down in any way, and was too light to hold the wheat in! Pretty pathetic.

 

My mother owned an old electric mill which had three spider legs on it, and a metal grinding stone. It milled very fine flour, and had a bag with elastic at the top, which fit over the milling stones. It was a messy thing to use, and slow. But it produced good flour. If you ever see one of these used, it will be worth $50 or so if still operational.

If you are going to mill a lot of grain, a dedicated grain mill is well worth it. While some blenders will grind grain, they do very small amounts at one time, are slow to do it, and produce fairly coarse flour. They are only really an emergency option, not a full time all the time option.

I have also always chose to NOT use a Kitchenaid grain mill, in part because of the flour quality (they don't mill as fine as a Blendtec grain mill), and in part because I don't want to wear out the Kitchenaid milling grain, which is a heavy duty task and puts a lot of stress on the motor. A Kitchenaid of the size I need is more costly than a grain mill.



For hand crank, a Country Living is the BEST. It will mill fine flour. But it is also EXPENSIVE. It is hard to crank, the extension bar for the crank wheel is a good idea to reduce the stress. It can be adapted for electric.

Any hand crank wheat mill is hard to crank, and producing flour is slow. The cheaper they are, the slower they are and the coarser the flour.

AVOID those $20-30 cheapie hand mills. They are made of aluminum, which will grind off into your flour, and they bend and wear way too fast to be useful. We got one to do meal, and to crack grain for our animals. Not worth the price, even so low!

A better option for cracked grain is an oat roller, which does a MARVELOUS job of rolling oat groats, but will also crack grain. It says it will make flour, trust me, it won't. But it will make good meal, but it is also HARD to crank when you are doing hard grains. Easy for oats, they are soft. Hard for corn or wheat.

 

It helps if you can actually see a mill in use before you leap, because things that bother one person do not bother another, and each family likes a little different functions.

What I can tell you is, fresh flour is nutritionally superior, contains the germ, and your body will notice the difference. Good fine flour (Hard White Wheat is AMAZING!) is usable for anything that you'd use white flour for.

This is one appliance that I simply do not live well without.