Let’s examine the difference between wet milling and dry milling.
Dry milling typically uses particle-on-particle contact to reduce materials’ size, while wet milling involves dispersing the material in a liquid and using solid, grinding elements to reduce size. Rice varieties can be broken down through either one of these processes, but wet milling, which we’ll discuss first, tends to be a more intensive process than dry milling. Wet milling, also known as wet grinding, is decanted to obtain wet flour after which it is dried in hot air before sieving to desired particle size. Once the milling process is complete, these particles are ready for use or can be dried and separated for incorporation into additional products. Wet milling is more complex than dry milling, thanks to the addition of a liquid, but this process also has the power to reduce a product into finer particles. This allows to produce a greater variety of byproducts and can result in improved physical properties in the final product. By contrast, dry milling utilizes no liquid element, and is most frequently used for the particle size reduction of dry materials like powders and granules, or de-agglomerating and de-lumping bulk materials. While dry milling is a less intensive process, which often makes it the first method considered, wet milling is the best and most efficient way to get to the preferred Rice Flour particle size.