Mash the day before brewing?

[SEPDX_Brewer]

I am busy and don't like killing my day off either. Here's what I have been doing with great success.

Thursday night: prep water, supplies, etc. get pot filled with strike water (30 min)

Friday before work 6 am: heat strike water and dough in (30 min)

Friday evening 10+ hours later: call wife and have her start heating sparge water while I am on my way home, get home and batch Sparge and start boil. Finish a brew day as normal (2.5 hours) so by 7:30 or so I am finished on Friday with still enough time to chill and watch a movie. Hope this helps someone. Oh and BTW no kettle souring or issues with too low FG. I think the Alpha and Beta Aml. Enzymes don't go working all night long. They only live so long 60-90 min. ... if what I have heard is correct.

 

[Davo_71]

This ended up working out pretty well. On the first night, I mashed, batch sparged and collected all the the sweet liquor in the brew kettle. Pre-boil gravity was 0.003 higher than expected, so not bad. Then, I covered it and just left in the uninsulated BK on the stove.

On the second night, I started the boil when I got home from work and proceeded with normal processes. OG post boil was right on. Fermentation got going, as it usually does with a healthy starter.

Final gravity was 0.006 higher than predicted, but fermentation was definitely complete, as confirmed by two identical gravity readings 48 hours apart. My guess is that higher FG was probably a result of mash temp being a few degrees higher than called for in the recipe, which would have impacted fermentability of the wort.

I tasted the final product this weekend, an oatmeal stout. It will benefit from some conditioning, but it wasn't too bad after a week in the bottle. It definitely confirms that the 2-night brew process is viable, at least in my mind.

Next time, I will probably take the advice of one of the posters and bring the wort up to 180 in the BK before shutting down on the first night, just to make sure I kill off any bugs that might potentially sour the beer.

 

[Jorb]

I tried this method yesterday. I mashed Friday night with my recirculating eBIAB rig. I pulled the bag after mashing out to 170 and let the unboiled wort sit overnight. In 11 hours it dropped to 100 degrees F in my uninsulated pot. I boiled Saturday morning, chilled to 80 and them put it in the ferm chamber. Saturday night it was at 50 degrees and I pitched my lager yeast. This morning it's happily bubbling away.

I kegged this batch over the weekend. It still needs time to lager but I can't detect any off flavors. I'm calling the overnight mash a success.

 

[pshankstar]

I did a small batch (3 gallons BIAB) mash last night. Before bed I pulled the bag, let it drain, then placed it into a colander inside of another bowl. I placed the lid on the kettle, wrapped some towels around the lid and went to bed. This morning I poured the remaining wort from the colander into the kettle and started the boil.

I've done this method before even with larger batches and haven't had a problem. I will most likely continue to do this b/c it saves time and works better with my schedule.

 

[Sdiddy84]

I'm going to try this method this weekend.
Schedule will look something like this.

Friday night - mash and vorlauf. Collect sweet wort and heat to 180° and cover and wrap my BK in blankets

Saturday morning - continue boil as normal.

We'll see if this batch turns out without any off flavours.
If not I'll probably use this method a bit more often considering I have a 5 month old daughter who gets the majority of my attention.

 

[wilserbrewer]

I like that more are trying this. As an improvement to time management, I would suggest the "overnight" mash as opposed to "mashing the day before".

With the overnight mash, you could be sleeping during the mash and saving time. If your collecting the wort the night before, you're not saving any time, but just breaking the session.

JMO cheers