6 Best Seed Cleaning Mills For Beans Old Farmers Swear By

You’ve spent all season tending your bean patch, and now you’re staring at five-gallon buckets full of beautiful, dry pods. The satisfaction is immense, but so is the next task: separating those perfect beans from the chaff, dirt, and duds. Hand-sorting a few pounds for dinner is one thing, but cleaning enough to save for next year’s seed and fill the pantry is a whole other level of work. A good seed cleaning mill isn’t a luxury; it’s a time machine that gives you back hours of your life and ensures the quality of your future harvests.

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Selecting the Right Mill for Your Bean Harvest

The "best" seed cleaner is the one that fits the scale of your operation. Before you even look at a specific model, you need an honest assessment of your needs. Are you cleaning a few pounds of a rare heirloom variety, or are you processing 100 pounds of pinto beans for winter storage? The answer dictates everything.

A small, hand-cranked winnower is perfect for the gardener with a few raised beds. It’s simple, requires no electricity, and does a decent job of removing light debris. But if you have a quarter-acre of black beans, that same hand-crank will become an instrument of torture. For larger hobby-scale harvests, a powered benchtop model with screens is the only sustainable choice.

Think about your end goal, too. If you’re just cleaning beans for chili, removing pods and dirt is enough. But if you’re saving seed, you need a machine that can also grade by size and density, removing cracked, shriveled, or insect-damaged beans. The quality of the seed you plant determines the quality of the crop you harvest. A mill that uses both air and screens gives you that critical level of control.

A.T. Ferrell Clipper Office Tester: The Gold Standard

When old-timers talk about a fanning mill, they’re often picturing a Clipper. The Office Tester and Cleaner is the iconic, small-scale version of the larger farm models, and for good reason. It’s a simple, brutally effective machine that uses a fan to blow away light chaff and a series of vibrating screens to sort the beans by size. It’s the definition of "buy it for life."

These machines are built from steel and wood, with a design that hasn’t changed much in decades because it just works. The key to the Clipper’s effectiveness is the vast array of available screens. You can get round-hole screens for sorting your kidney beans and slotted screens for longer varieties, allowing you to perfectly tailor the cleaning process to your specific crop. A single pass can remove dirt, weed seeds, and split beans, leaving you with a pristine sample.

The main tradeoff is cost and space. Even a used Office Tester is a significant investment, and it’s not a small machine you can tuck away in a closet. But if you are serious about saving seed and process more than 50 pounds of beans a year, the time and labor it saves will pay for itself within a few seasons. It’s the kind of tool you buy once and pass down to the next generation.

Mater Hand-Cranked Winnower for Off-Grid Cleaning

For the homesteader focused on simplicity and resilience, the Mater Winnower is a brilliant piece of low-tech engineering. There are no motors and no complicated adjustments. You simply pour your threshed beans into the hopper, turn the crank, and let physics do the work. The crank powers a fan that creates a steady column of air, blowing the lightweight chaff and dust out one side while the heavier, clean beans fall straight down into a bucket.

This tool is all about managing expectations. It will not sort beans by size or remove rocks that are the same weight as a bean. Its sole purpose is to separate light from heavy. For cleaning a small harvest of beans for the pantry, it is remarkably fast and effective, turning a tedious, dusty job into a quick and satisfying one. It’s also portable, quiet, and requires zero electricity.

The Mater is the perfect solution for someone harvesting under 20 pounds of beans or for anyone living off-grid. It’s an empowering tool that frees you from reliance on electricity for a critical part of the food preservation process. However, if your goal is producing high-quality, graded seed, you will still need to follow up with a final round of hand-sorting or use a screen-based system.

Seedburo 801 Count-A-Pak for Precision Sorting

This machine is not for cleaning your main crop for dinner. The Seedburo Count-A-Pak is a specialized piece of lab equipment designed for absolute precision with small, high-value seed lots. Think of it as a tool for the serious seed saver or the hobbyist bean breeder, not the production-focused grower. It operates using a vibratory feeder and a vacuum-powered seed counting head.

Its primary function is to accurately count and package seeds, but its gentle handling and precision make it excellent for sorting small batches. You can use it to separate varieties or to create perfectly uniform packets for seed swaps or small-scale sales. It eliminates the human error and tedium of counting out hundreds of seeds by hand.

Let’s be clear: this is a niche tool. You would never use it to clean a five-gallon bucket of black beans. But if you are developing a new bean cross or trying to preserve a rare heirloom with only a few hundred seeds to its name, the Count-A-Pak provides a level of control and accuracy that no bulk cleaner can match. It’s for the perfectionist who values data and purity above all else.

Hance 36-S Bench Model: A Compact Powerhouse

The Hance 36-S strikes a fantastic balance between the power of a full-size fanning mill and the space constraints of a small farm. It’s a benchtop unit that packs the same core components as its larger siblings—a powerful fan and two vibrating screens—into a much smaller footprint. This is the logical next step for someone who has outgrown hand-winnowing.

Powered by a small electric motor, the Hance does the hard work for you. It provides consistent airflow and screen agitation, which leads to a much cleaner, more uniform final product than you can achieve by hand. It’s big enough to handle a 50- or 100-pound batch of beans in a reasonable amount of time but small enough to be stored on a heavy-duty shelf when not in use.

This is the workhorse for the serious hobby farmer. It’s robust enough to clean beans, but with the right screens, it can also handle wheat, oats, or corn. The tradeoff is that it’s still a significant piece of equipment that makes noise and creates dust. But for the farmer who wants to process a few hundred pounds of dry goods a year without dedicating an entire outbuilding to the task, the Hance 36-S is an incredibly capable and practical choice.

Forsbergs 1-VSA-JR for Small-Scale Versatility

Forsbergs is a name synonymous with high-quality separation technology, and their lab-sized equipment is a dream for the meticulous small-scale grower. The 1-VSA-JR is a gravity separator, a different class of machine from a simple fanning mill. It uses a vibrating, tilted, perforated deck with controlled airflow coming up through it. This combination effectively makes materials "float" at different levels based on their density.

This machine can do what a simple screen cleaner cannot: it can separate beans of the same size but different weights. This means it can remove hollow beans, beans damaged by insects, or even those that are just slightly less dense due to poor growing conditions. The result is a seed lot of exceptionally high quality and uniformity, which often leads to better germination rates and a more vigorous crop.

The Forsbergs is a precision instrument, and it comes with a corresponding price tag and learning curve. It’s overkill for simply cleaning beans for soup. But for the dedicated seed producer who grows multiple crops and demands the absolute highest quality, this machine offers an unparalleled level of control. It’s the kind of investment you make when your hobby starts to look more like a serious small business.

Crippen C-2 Lab Seed Cleaner: Built to Last

If you value overbuilt, heavy-duty machinery, then a Crippen is for you. Like the Clipper, the Crippen C-2 is a lab-sized fanning mill that uses air and screens, but it’s constructed with an industrial mindset. These machines are made from heavy-gauge steel and are designed to run for decades with minimal maintenance. Finding a used one is like finding a treasure.

The operation is straightforward: beans are fed from a hopper, hit a blast of air to remove chaff, and then travel over a set of screens to be graded by size. What sets the Crippen apart is its sheer durability. Everything from the frame to the screen-shaking mechanism is built to withstand constant use. It’s a no-frills machine designed to do one job exceptionally well for a very, very long time.

The main consideration with a Crippen is its weight and the availability of screens. These are heavy machines, and you’ll want to find a permanent spot for one. While many standard screens will fit, finding original Crippen screens can sometimes be a hunt. But for the farmer who believes in buying tools that will outlive them, a Crippen C-2 is a testament to American manufacturing and a reliable partner in the harvest.

Maintaining Your Mill: Screens, Belts, and Care

Owning a seed cleaner is only half the battle; knowing how to maintain it is what ensures it will serve you for years. The single most important component is your set of screens. You need the right size and shape for your crop. For beans, you’ll typically use a round-hole screen on top that is just large enough to let your good beans fall through, and a slotted or smaller round-hole screen on the bottom to let splits and small debris fall out while retaining the clean seed.

Regularly inspect the simple mechanical parts. On a powered mill, check the belt for cracks and proper tension. On any mill, make sure the fan housing is clear of debris and that the screen-shaking mechanisms are moving freely. A little bit of grease on the right fittings and a good cleaning with compressed air after each use goes a long way.

Finally, store your mill properly. Keep it in a dry place, like a barn or shed, to prevent rust on the metal parts and rot on any wooden components. Store your screens flat so they don’t warp. A well-maintained 50-year-old Clipper will outperform a brand-new, neglected machine every single time. Your mill is an investment in future harvests, so treat it accordingly.

Choosing the right seed mill is about matching the machine to your mission. Whether it’s a simple hand-cranked winnower for your backyard plot or a heavy-duty benchtop model to process the harvest from a market garden, the goal is the same. You’re transforming a pile of dusty pods into clean, valuable food and the promise of next year’s crop. Investing in the right tool for this job doesn’t just save you time; it deepens the connection to the entire cycle of your food.