We have tried winnowing quinoa by hand with the wind. That works. We have winnowed quinoa with a mill and fan and that works too. Then we made a seed cleaner that acts with a vacuum from plans found here. These all work fine in our opinion on a small application.
As we grow more quinoa (40lbs winnowed quinoa in 2013) we hope to learn a more effective way of processing it. This im sure is also what Andean growers (and researchers all over the world now) have been working on too.
So this January we tried the Five in One seed cleaner at Golden Ears farm with some success. This machine can be outfitted with differing sized cylinders (with different sized holes) depending on the grain being processed. Since we didn't have the correct sized cylinder (it was set up for buckwheat, I think) we did what we could. We modified the main cylinder by tapping a piece of cardboard to cover the holes. If we hadn't, quinoa would just fall through at that stage.
The final verdict below...
As we grow more quinoa (40lbs winnowed quinoa in 2013) we hope to learn a more effective way of processing it. This im sure is also what Andean growers (and researchers all over the world now) have been working on too.
So this January we tried the Five in One seed cleaner at Golden Ears farm with some success. This machine can be outfitted with differing sized cylinders (with different sized holes) depending on the grain being processed. Since we didn't have the correct sized cylinder (it was set up for buckwheat, I think) we did what we could. We modified the main cylinder by tapping a piece of cardboard to cover the holes. If we hadn't, quinoa would just fall through at that stage.
The final verdict below...
The final verdict: this machine was slow (A few gallons took a few hours) and its quite loud... and the machine tossed some "good" quinoa in the reject pile. Would we use it again? Not for this application.