Overnight Mashing is a Thing?!

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DrunkleJon said:
Ok you do have a semantic point that you could possibly complete a conversion in 15 minutes (once again I have not tested this so I do not know for certain), but it will not be a mash according to the recipe.
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Again, Stone's Levitation Ale recipe as published by Stone Brewing states that the mash is held at saccharification rest for 10 minutes only. So it would be according to the recipe.
 
Ok. Maybe I misread stpug's post. looking back stpug was describing an outlier, or what an extreme in one direction case can do. My bad for trying to share information on why those steps take as long as they do (with documentation), and why most do not cut corners on mash temp/time. Imagine how you would react to read about a 15 minute mash if you only had 1 AG brew under your belt? Remember that the people who use these forums are all at differnt experience/comfort levels. Speed helps for naught unless quality follows or you are making shine which i will not get into
 
DrunkleJon said:
Not necessarily. Temperature will speed up the enzymes activity to a point. But if you go above the working temperature of an enzyme it will denature (break/modify the enzyme so that it doesnt work anymore) it. Yes it will work for a little while above its working temperature range but will denautre and not work anymore. If you make it further above the range it will denature faster. Denaturing the enzymes is how we control the fermentability of the wort.

Ok you do have a semantic point that you could possibly complete a conversion in 15 minutes (once again I have not tested this so I do not know for certain), but it will not be a mash according to the recipe. Maybe I am just a stickler for having the intended beer rather than just be in a rush. If I wanted a mash done in 15 minutes I would just use extracts to better effect. It seemed to me by the message that the poster was saying that we homebrewers are too 'stick by the traditional way of doing things" such as can be said about using a secondary when it can be done as easily with a 15 minute mash and a 60 minute boil.
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Yeah, that's why you mash at 158, to denature the beta amylase so that you get a less fermentable wort. It just so happens that at a higher temperature the chemical reactions that you want to happen are happening faster. Again, no one would increase the mash temperature just to save time. He was just saying that there are instances when a mash can be done in 15 minutes, and these instances occur when you mash at a higher temperature.

Also, as a couple of people have pointed out, most of the conversion that is going to occur in a mash is done within the first 15 or 20 minutes (RM-MN says 7, which I don't doubt).
 
kombat said:
I apologize for the tangent, but let's just run some numbers, out of curiousity.



OK, let's say it takes you 5 minutes to bring your gear upstairs and fill your pot with your strike water. In my setup, it takes me about 15 minutes to get 4 gallons of strike water to dough-in temperature, but I'm using a propane burner, and I start with hot water from the tap that's already 120° F. If you're starting with cold water and using an electric stove, can we call it 30 minutes to get 4 gallons up to 160°? I'll concede that you're doing other tasks while this is happening, so let's assume your grains get milled and everything else is set up during the 30 minutes you're waiting to reach temperature.

Doughing-in is not instantaneuous - figure another 10 minutes to securely attach the grain bag, then dump in the grains, stir to mix well, wait for the temperature to settle at the rest temperature, then seal up the tun/pot.



30 minutes is a little brief (10 is absurdly so), but I'll go with it, for the sake of argument. By the end of your mash, you're already 1:15 into it.



Again, it takes time to raise the temperature from 150-ish up to boiling. With my propane setup, that amounts to about half an hour (rising 2 degrees per minute), but I'll allow that your stove somehow achieves comparable performance, and 30 minutes after lifting the grain bag, you're boiling. That's 1:45.



My break falls in 5-10 minutes, so with the hour-long boil, you've now spent 2:55.



As someone else noted, if you're doing other stuff, then you're not swirling the wort to speed up chilling, and thus there's no way you're getting that chilled down in 15 minutes. Heck, I use a plate chiller, running my hose water through 50' of copper coil immersed in ice water, and it still takes me 20 minutes to get 5 gallons down to 65° F. Can I call this 30 minutes? Now we're up to 3:25.



5 minutes, at most. That's 3:30.



Hold on there, tiger. There are a lot of tasks you're skimming over here. It takes me a good 15 minutes to clean my kettle, but granted, that includes removing, dismantling, cleaning, reassembling, and reinstalling a Hop Stopper. But even the kettle itself gets a thorough scrubbing with PBW, followed by a couple rinse cycles. What about your chiller? Don't you at least hose it off? Did you not take a gravity sample? Do you clean your hydrometer and test jar afterwards? Taste the sample? Do you take any notes about the gravity, colour, etc.? Did you aerate the wort somehow? Carry it to the basement and put it in a swamp cooler? Cover it with a t-shirt and confirm the temperature? Clean the funnel used to pour in the yeast? Pack up the chiller, autosiphon, hydrometer, BrewHauler, whatever else? All of the things I just listed take me at least a half an hour in total.

There's your 4 hours. And if you'd done a "proper" (tongue-in-cheek) 60 minute mash, it'd be 4.5 hours, which, not coincidentally, is how long it takes me. :)
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Many of the tasks can be done concurrently, so while I fill the pot with water I'm bringing equipment upstairs and getting the grain weighed. I mill the grain while the water heats (My wife wanted a new stove a couple years ago and the burners are insanely hot, that's why it doesn't take so long to heat up). The bag I use has an elastic top so 10 seconds to stretch it over the pot and I'm set. Dough in only takes perhaps 2 minutes because I dump and stir at the same time and I stir like a madman to keep from getting dough balls.

30 minutes mash is just fine. Have you ever considered why you are instructed to do an hour long mash? Hint: it isn't because the conversion takes that long. With finely milled grain full conversion can be achieved in less than 10 minutes. I've just been slacking and letting my mash have that extra time.

Why are you scrubbing the pot with PBW? I use warm water and a scrubbie to scrub off the "beer stone" and the break material. I'm going to use that pot for brewing next. It doesn't need to be any cleaner. It won't contaminate my beer because I'm going to boil the wort anyway to kill anything that happened to be still alive in the pot. Since I BIAB, that pot is the only thing to clean after the yeast is pitched.
 
RM-MN said:
Many of the tasks can be done concurrently, so while I fill the pot with water I'm bringing equipment upstairs and getting the grain weighed. I mill the grain while the water heats (My wife wanted a new stove a couple years ago and the burners are insanely hot, that's why it doesn't take so long to heat up). The bag I use has an elastic top so 10 seconds to stretch it over the pot and I'm set. Dough in only takes perhaps 2 minutes because I dump and stir at the same time and I stir like a madman to keep from getting dough balls.

30 minutes mash is just fine. Have you ever considered why you are instructed to do an hour long mash? Hint: it isn't because the conversion takes that long. With finely milled grain full conversion can be achieved in less than 10 minutes. I've just been slacking and letting my mash have that extra time.

Why are you scrubbing the pot with PBW? I use warm water and a scrubbie to scrub off the "beer stone" and the break material. I'm going to use that pot for brewing next. It doesn't need to be any cleaner. It won't contaminate my beer because I'm going to boil the wort anyway to kill anything that happened to be still alive in the pot. Since I BIAB, that pot is the only thing to clean after the yeast is pitched.
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How long have you been brewing for?
I'm pretty new with about 10 AGs under my belt and do a BIAB very similar to yours. I try to multitask and do stuff during my mash and boil (between additions) but STILL get KILLED by the chilling and cleanup time. last one was 5 hours, and pretty efficent by my standards.
Note: I do a 90 min mash and 60min boil, so if following your procedures I'd clock in at 4hrs.
 
The boil is pretty fixed as it takes time to polymerize the hop oils for bittering and to drive off the precursors to DMS so your beer doesn't smell like cooked corn. If you read all this thread you'll see where I checked and had conversion in under 10 minutes so explain why you are doing a 90 minute mash. Is your grain not milled fine enough? Try a 30 minute mash sometime.

For fast cooling you need a temperature differential that is a great as you can get. If you use a chiller, your tap water may not be cold enough for good heat transfer. If you use a tub to immerse the boil kettle as I do, you need a big one. 5 gallons of boiling hot wort will heat up 10 gallons of tap water pretty fast. You need a way to keep that water cool. If it is before there is snow, I run a hose into the big tub and let the hot water escape over the side to keep the wort chilling. With snow, I put the water into the tub and let it cool outside while I am boiling the wort (sometimes I have to break ice to put the pot into the tub). Then as soon as I put the pot of wort in, I dump lots of snow into the water and replenish that as much as necessary.

I've only been brewing for about 7 years but have probably made 30 or more batches all grain. I like to do some 5 gallon batches and some 2 1/2 gallon so I get a lot of variety in my beer.
 
Haha... wow hijacked thread! Anyways, thanks for the info guys.

Just to be clear I'm more concerned with scorching the wort than melting or warping the pot. I've heard once a pot scortches a wort it always will. Guess that's a myth?
 
DSorenson said:
Haha... wow hijacked thread! Anyways, thanks for the info guys.

Just to be clear I'm more concerned with scorching the wort than melting or warping the pot. I've heard once a pot scortches a wort it always will. Guess that's a myth?
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My apologies for helping with the hijack.

Wort scorching is more of a hazard of using liquid malt extract. LME is denser than water/wort and as a result likes to fall to the bottom as you add it.

If not using extracts, when you first start bringing your wort to a boil, crank the heat all the way up and stir periodically and you should not have a problem with scorching. If you are using malt extracts, breaking up the additions and not adding LME while on the heat and stirring well should help mitigate the risk. Once it comes to a boil and you achieve your hot break, you can turn the heat way down as you will not need as much to maintain the boil. You should not have a problem with scorching.
 
DSorenson said:
Just to be clear I'm more concerned with scorching the wort than melting or warping the pot.
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Is scorching the wort a concern with all-grain worts? I thought you only had to worry about scorching when using LME. And even then, you just cut the heat while stirring in the LME, then you can crank the flame back up.

DSorenson said:
I've heard once a pot scortches a wort it always will. Guess that's a myth?
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I've never heard that one. But if you're using a stainless steel kettle, you should be able to get it pristine again with some Barkeeper's Friend, PBW, and elbow grease. I've done 37 batches in my kettle, and it still looks like it just arrived in the mail.
 
DSorenson said:
Haha... wow hijacked thread! Anyways, thanks for the info guys.

Just to be clear I'm more concerned with scorching the wort than melting or warping the pot. I've heard once a pot scortches a wort it always will. Guess that's a myth?
Click to expand...

Haha, yeah that was a pretty intense hijack. Everyone went off pretty in depth in a couple different directions.

DrunkleJon said:
My apologies for helping with the hijack.

Wort scorching is more of a hazard of using liquid malt extract. LME is denser than water/wort and as a result likes to fall to the bottom as you add it.

If not using extracts, when you first start bringing your wort to a boil, crank the heat all the way up and stir periodically and you should not have a problem with scorching. If you are using malt extracts, breaking up the additions and not adding LME while on the heat and stirring well should help mitigate the risk. Once it comes to a boil and you achieve your hot break, you can turn the heat way down as you will not need as much to maintain the boil. You should not have a problem with scorching.
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+1 to this^^ as far as scorching is concerned. I turn it all the way up and just stir a little bit while brining it to a boil. Never had the slightest hint of scorching and I have an aluminum pot. Once it's at a boil you can turn it down and the boiling action should mix the wort up pretty well so you don't need to worry about scorching then either.
 
Ok back to our scheduled programming and the OP's question.

IMO an overnight mash is fine and presents little to no risk of spoilage from lacto, by overnight we assume one mashes in at night and resumes the process the following morning, say an 8 hour mash roughly speaking.

Perhaps to counter the long mash, mashing a little higher would be beneficial...IDK.
 
Thanks again for the info guys! I'm looking forward to cutting down on some of the brew time already. Speaking of cutting time, who has a good reference or experience with partigyle brewing? Two beers from one mash sounds good to me, even if I have to fortify the wort of one or both with some dme.

Thanks as always, and I don't mind hijacks ;)
 
DSorenson said:
Thanks again for the info guys! I'm looking forward to cutting down on some of the brew time already. Speaking of cutting time, who has a good reference or experience with partigyle brewing? Two beers from one mash sounds good to me, even if I have to fortify the wort of one or both with some dme.

Thanks as always, and I don't mind hijacks ;)
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Partigyle works well. Kinda have to keep track of your PBG depending on if you want an IPA and a Pale or make sure to stir it up to get the wort to the same SPG for both batches if you want the same ABV. The strong wort will stay in the bottom of the BK after lautering. Fun stuff though.
 
justkev52 said:
Partigyle works well. Kinda have to keep track of your PBG depending on if you want an IPA and a Pale or make sure to stir it up to get the wort to the same SPG for both batches if you want the same ABV. The strong wort will stay in the bottom of the BK after lautering. Fun stuff though.
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Justkev you kind of lost me there with your comment on partigyle. Curious about your methods.... how you partigyle?
 
I did it on a porter last fall that turned out spectacular- I was actually looking for a little sour note but nothing happened - I didn't wrap it in a blanket or anything.
 

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