Overnight mash

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djamwolfe

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Ive heard of overnight mashing somewhere here before but I cant find anything with searching.... I'm doing the oatmeal stout HERE and wouldn't mind starting it tonight and sparging and boiling tomorrow morning. Do I have to raise the temp of the mash back up before I sparge? Or will the temp sty up overnight?

FYI - I use one of those 5 gal. Igloo "maxcool" water coolers for my mash/lauter tun.
 
I don't know about letting your mash sit overnight. I have heard of people making their wort the night before then refrigerating it and then boiling and adding hops the next day to save time. Although that may have been for a partial mash.
 
Baron von BeeGee said:
People do it with good results, at least I've seen plenty of anecdotal evidence of such; but I've never done it. It would be a great time saver in terms of splitting a day.

Arey you talking about making the mash the day before boiling or letting the mash sit overnight?
 
AleHole said:
Arey you talking about making the mash the day before boiling or letting the mash sit overnight?
Doughing in the night before and letting the mash sit overnight. What I've read reports of people doing is mashing in the night before, going to work the next day, and then running off and boiling after work. Apparently it works, though I would be suspicious of souring as you mentioned. I'm pretty sure most people wrap blankets/sleeping bags around their coolers to insulate as much as possible.
 
Baron von BeeGee said:
Doughing in the night before and letting the mash sit overnight. What I've read reports of people doing is mashing in the night before, going to work the next day, and then running off and boiling after work. Apparently it works, though I would be suspicious of souring as you mentioned. I'm pretty sure most people wrap blankets/sleeping bags around their coolers to insulate as much as possible.

This seems highly suspect to me. Most all modified modern malts will convert in 60 minutes or less. Why wait....for sour beer? I would like to sample a homebrew made this way.
 
Glibbidy said:
This seems highly suspect to me. Most all modified modern malts will convert in 60 minutes or less. Why wait....for sour beer? I would like to sample a homebrew made this way.
The reason for waiting is simply a time constraint...a lot of people (well, probably not a lot, but some!) don't have 4-5 hrs to devote to an all-grain batch. By mashing in the night before you have two sessions of 2-2.5hrs counting setup and cleanup.

Like I say, I've never tried it, just read anecdotal accounts of people doing it with good results and no souring.

:mug:
 
Fwiw, I have soured mash on purpose for one of my ales. You need to keep it fairly warm to get good results (good here being sour :D). If your tun stays above 130 you are going to sour your mash but the degree of sourness will most likely hit at the low edge of sourness. In other words it will not be pungent, at least in my experience. What I would suggest is, take about 1 lb of grain and hit it with your strike temperature and put it in a small water cooler overnight and see what you get. Concentrations of Lactobacillus on the grain will vary so you may not get consistency from batch to batch in terms of a 24 hr period development. One other approach you might want to try, this is a brainstorm I had would be to quickly rinse your grain before crushing. This would hopefully result in fairly low concentrations of the souring bacteria....but it is just a brainstorm. The only problem is this might introduce problems with the crush.
 
thanks everyone or the replies --- I was only thinking this so SWMBO doesnt complain that im brewing all day. I think I may try this in the future as I see no harm leaving the mash at 152 for an extended period of time.
:off: Just curious about the souring, is that created by lacto or some other bacteria? If so wouldn't that be avoided by keeping the mash temps up?
Thanks again :mug:
 
djamwolfe said:
thanks everyone or the replies --- I was only thinking this so SWMBO doesnt complain that im brewing all day. I think I may try this in the future as I see no harm leaving the mash at 152 for an extended period of time.
:off: Just curious about the souring, is that created by lacto or some other bacteria? If so wouldn't that be avoided by keeping the mash temps up?
Thanks again :mug:


I believe in general the majority is Lactobacillus, but you always have the opportunity to pick up some other guys like Acetobacter (makes vinegar). The thing is as long as it is pre-boil you're in good shape if you like the sourness. Oh one other thing you could do....rather than mash overnight, why not mash and lauter, put it into a ss vessel and place the whole thing covered somewhere cold. Now this would probably be the best method of avoiding souring as you drop the temperatures. The biggest problem is the warm tun is a nice breeding ground, but get it cold and they get cold feet :D
 
The souring method has been around since the beginning of time. In fact, it is the first method to successfully brewing a beer. Ancient civilizations would dough in and then let the whole thing rest for 1,2 or even 3 days, depending how sour they wanted the beer. Then they would squeeze the dough ball and drain the liquid. They would dring this liquid for medicinal purposes, spiritial rituals or party. This is also the technique (similar) to making Lambic.

So go forward, try it out. You will be pleasantly surprised.

- WW
 
The best trick is to add as much extra hot water to the tun at mash out as possible. The extra energy and water mass will reduce temperature loss (not the heat loss, just temperature). As was mentioned 120-130F is the critical point.
 
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