Modern screener in old water mill produces high quality flour
by Henry Alamzad, President, Kason Corporation
First published in Milling and Grain, June 2015
If visitors from centuries past returned to a familiar footpath by the River Gowry in northern England, they might be shocked by changes that have taken place, but there would be one comforting sight, the old mill with its large water wheel. Powered by a stream diverted from the river, the wheel works through gears to grind wheat into flour for making bread.
Inside the mill the wheat is ground between two flat, 135 cm diametre millstones, a method employed for hundreds of years. However, our time traveller would likely be puzzled by some of the equipment, in particular an electrically driven centrifugal screener. The Centri-Sifter™ centrifugal sifter, as it is called, was supplied by Kason Corporation (Millburn, New Jersey, USA) and recovers the mill’s two basic products: white and whole meal flours.
There has been a water mill at the site since the 13th century, but the present building, Walk Mill, is no older than the screener, despite its aged appearance. Rebuilt as a replica of an earlier mill, the new facility started up in 2008. The last mill on the site ceased production in 1915 and only the footprint of the building was left, says Ben Jones, a partner in the family-owned business, who is in charge of mill operations.
“We dug the foundations to find the footprint of the building and we also had a lot of photographs of the old mill. From the footprint and the pictures we were able to construct a building that is exactly like the old mill on the outside.”
Read the full article in Milling and Grain HERE.
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