Do they do anything?

?

They process grains into consumable forms.

What? I can harvest the ingredients by the grainmills already, so what does "activating" it do?

the UESP said it was just for role playing

Unless I missed something, they don't do anything right now, unless there's already a mod for that.

They should have been used for creating "powered mammoth tusk" from regular tusks. Someone should mod that in.

They dont do anything i think x)..

I think at some of them when you activate it you just push it around in circles but apart from that it doesent do anything.

When I wad new to the game I actually put wheat, gourds and lettuce and such in it to make flour, and then I spun it.
Dunno how i thought that would work.

They do about as much as using the big sawmills does. Not a thing.

You at least get firewood from the sawmills though. You can also damage them.

I haven't gotten anything from the grainmill, so I was curious about it.

No. you get firewood for chopping wood at a block. Using the mill itself gets you nothing. Unless I've somehow missed the wood appearing in my inventory all this time.

It doesn't magically appear in your inventory. You have to go pick up the firewood after operating the sawmill.

I seriously did not know that. *rushes to use a sawmill*

They crush the grains so that they can be put into a mash tun.After a sparging time the wort,that is the water that the grains were steeped in,is then boiled for about 60 minutes.In this 60 minutes we add hops,or in Skyrims place juniper berry's.
After a few weeks of fermentation this sweet mixture becomes Ale.
The same thing can be done with honey,in a slighty differant process,to make mead or even wine.
To me it is clear that making Ale,mead or wine makes sence in a world such as Skyrim.
You can't trust water to be clean and drinkable,but however nothing can servive the brewing proccess of the fermented goodies ale,beer,wine and mead.
This is why it was a staple drink way back when.Err I mean in Skyrim.

As for you, the player, its nothing but usable, it doesnt grant you anything.
Still like the fact you can use them tho.

No there is nothing there for the player,but it was mentioned earlier that it was for roleplaying.
It's for the purpose of roleplaying however one wishes to roleplay.

Edit: After re-reading my post I think I sound kind of like an A**.This was certainly not my intention here.

to do free work for the farmers for God sake!!!

nothing, apart from the animation.

Yeah, I don't understand why they didn't let you make flour with it, then allow you to use that flour to make bread.

How about just lending a hand every now and then.The farmers work hard to feed the village.
There out there from 8am to 8pm allmost everyday to make sure the Inn has bread and ale to sell.
I have no problem helping them out every now and then.

Help them do what? Create invisible flour?

They really should have let us brew ale and bake bread... It really wouldn't have taken much time to implement. But, of course, they had to get the game out by 11/11/11.