Question re: when to crush grains

Hi guys. Something painful happened yesterday. I was crushing 8.5 lbs of pale ale malt/crystal malt for an english pale ale, and damn if $hit didn't hit the fan at my house and brewday got cancelled. I put the crushed grain in a paper grocery sack, then in a plastic bag, wrapped tight but not vacuum-sealed. Then I put it in my deep freeze until I can find 4hours to brew.

Does anyone know if there are major negative effects to crushing malt then waiting a while? Is there a point of no return? (FYI, I bought the grain a week ago from a large retail liquor chain, called Liquor Barn. It was a 10 lb bag of muntons english 2 row pale malt and 1lb bag of muntons 40L crystal).

Any help/tips/comments are appreciated.

BTW, I'm new to posting but have been a long-time lurker.

How long do you plan to wait? I've gone a week with no ill effects. Are you talking 7 days or 30?

I've seen others on this site say they've done it a few weeks in advance with no problems. I think many more will tell you to get brewing before the grains go stale or worse. My longest waiting to use crushed grains was I think a week and I similarly had no noticable ill effects...

I've crushed grains and kept them in a sealed bucket for about a month and everything came out just fine.

Many thanks for the replies. I "plan" to brew no later than Saturday. With 2 kids ages 6 and 2, you never know. I may just say to hell with it and take a half day for "personal reasons". Missing a brew session is just cause, imo!

The sooner you can use them the better. If they're frozen they'll deteriorate slower, so you should be safe for at least a few weeks, but be sure to heat up your mash water a bit more to compensate. I think there are a few mash temp calculators out there that take that into account.

I don't recommend a paper bag for storage. I'd think you would draw the moister out of the freshly crushed malt.
If you have a plastic 5-6 gallon bucket with a lid. I'd just put it in the plastic trash bag then into the bucket and seal the lid and keep it in a cool place. It should be okay for up to a month, although the freshest wort is made from freshly milled malt.