Results - Overnight mash & Mash at Night, collect-boil in morning

[shoreman]

I've seen alot of posts about overnight mashing and mashing at night and collecting in the morning without results, so I thought I'd share my experience with both of these. A little background - I brew 2.5-10 gallon batches but mostly 5g, BJCP judge, passionate about session beers but still brew big beers as well, BIAB. Favorite part of brewing to me is recipe generation & fermentation, everything about dif strains, temps, etc.

Overnight mash was a Dry Irish Stout (springtime brew session), I mashed in my kettle with the a blanket wrapped around it about 9pm. Woke up and boiled about 9am the next day. No sourness, no off flavors in the final beer, just alot of attenuation on this one - finished at 1.002 which was fine for the style. This method is great for beers that you want to dry out, Belgians, Saisons, Dry Stout, etc. The beer turned out great and I could not detect any off flavors.

Mash at Night, collect runnings & boil in morning was a Kolsch-style beer and just made that one recently. Was done with the mash at 9pm, pulled the bag, let it sit overnight wrapped wit ha blanket (thinking this might hold temps higher, not sure its necessary). Boiled at 8:00am next day, no sourness to the wort in the nose or taste, no sign of fermentation. This one is still fermenting out but the samples have been totally fine.

I don't think I saved that much time with these methods BUT if you only have 2 hours one night and two hours in the following morning, these are good methods to crank out a brew.

Both of these were done in the spring with temps around 40, so I probably wouldn't risk it in mid August 80degree temps and bugs are prolific.

So if you are looking for ways to have a short brew day and crank out an AG beer, this is the best method that I've found:

It's a combo of Short and Shoddy http://brulosophy.com/projects/short-shoddy/ & Randy Mosher's Lazy Guide to Mashing - http://allaboutbeer.com/article/the-lazy-brewers-guide-to-mashing/

You can easily get one of these beers out in 2-2.5 hours. What I do:

1. BIAB crush grains night before
   
2. put 1 gallon water in freezer
3. heat up BIAB water for 4.25+ gallons
   
4. Mash for 30-60 mins depending on time
5. 30 minute boil (have to account for hop util. loss)
6. Chill it down to about 90 or 100 degrees
   
7. 1 gallon water just about frozen in fermenter (account for hop loss here too, I like John Maier's approach with a heavy hand anyways)
   
8. add wort & stir (generally that's down to 70)
9. pitch

That's it - if you have any other tips or tricks that have helped save time, would love to hear them.