Steeping ahead of time

For an extract brew, does anyone think there would be a problem steeping the grains the day before doing the boil and storing the result overnight in the refrigerator?

I'm not quite sure why you would want to do that.

If you are looking to save time you can always steep in a second pot with the appropriate amount of water like 1 gallon. Use your large pot for the main boil and hop additions, while the grains are steeping (although generally the other pot won't even get to a boil by the time the 30 min is up). You should put some malt extract at the beginning of the boil so that will be enough for the hop utilization. Just add the two pots together either during the boil, or at the end prior to cooling.

Steeping and boiling in parallel is an interesting idea, but I'm more interested in the feasibility of doing them on separate days without affecting the end result.

I have never tried steeping the day before, but I have heard bad things about mashing the day before and boiling the next day. It can easily go bad in a hurry. I heard that you can sometimes get away with it, but eventually you would end up throwing out a batch. Steeping would be similar, but just lower gravity.

When I extract brewed, I just heated my boil water to 162, turned off the heat, steeped grains for 20 minutes and removed spent grain, continued heating water and added DME / LME.

It only took an extra 20 minutes or less as I even started heating before removing the grain as long as my temp wasn't over 170 when I removed them. You will start getting tannins from the husks if you steep over 170.

I don't know about steeping for certain, but the same principles would apply for mashing or steeping. I was reading an article about partigyling (essentially using the wort from 1 mash to make 2 separate beers), and it mentioned basically what hockeydad was saying. You may get away with it sometimes, but you run the risk of stuff growing in your beer that will cause off flavors that won't go away when you boil.

Here's what I did:



https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/delaying-boil-122935/

While not disagreeing with any responses here, I see no problem with it in theory. I did this once with a mini-mash. I kept the two gallons of wort in the fridge overnight. I forget why, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. The beer turned out great.

I think it will usually work like 3bls said, but I would only do it in a case like he mentioned (where time slipped away and you couldn't finish the batch).

Personally I think it would take nearly as long to reheat from the fridge as the 20 minutes I delayed my boil for steeping.

I wouldn't make this regular practice as it might come to bite you some day, but it should usually work in a pinch.

Between cooling and packaging and storing and reheating, I just do not see any time savings in doing it this way.