I looked around the forum a bit, found some info on mashing in the night before in a cooler, but wondering how this might work in the Foundry. Right now, I plugin my Foundry the night before, fill it with water, and set the delay timer for 8 hours or whatever so it turns itself on and starts heating before I get up.
Wondering how this might work to actually mash in at room temp and leave it sit there all night until the Foundry turns on in the morning. This way, I could maybe have the sacchrification rest in full swing before I even wake up. Maybe even be ready for mashout.
One thing I’d be concerned about (although no idea if this is an actual issue or not) is that since you haven’t started from mash temps any bacteria on the surface of the grain hasn’t been pasteurized. An overnight soak may lead to some lactic acid formation (and possibly other more harmful stuff) prior to ramping up to mash temps.
Otherwise, this would be a really cool idea and would shave an hour or more off my brewday if it worked.
Ah, yeah the moisture and microrganism thing. I guess I’d be more inclined then to get the Foundry up to 152F, mash in, turn it off and hit the sack. I’ll bet the double wall would keep it hot for quite some time. Maybe even until morning hmmm… A test run with some water might prove interesting.
I would be concerned with bacterial growth, so I suggest sealing out O2, if possible, to help keep those buggers from taking hold overnight, even with the 152 starting point.
I would expect a highly fermentable wort from that long mash process. Maybe a preferred process would be to do a full mash the night before, sparge as usual and raise to a mashout temp and hold the wort at that temp through the night for boiling the next morning…
Maybe. The guys mashing in the cooler overnight say heat loss is quite low. Anecdotally, “Only a few degrees”. I think letting the Foundry hold the heat overnight would achieve the same end result but not sure I want to leave it running all night. I’ve left hot water sit in it for an hour or so during clean up and when I’ve come back the water is still too hot to stick a sponge in and slosh about so it retains heat quite well with the double wall design.
I guess I’d have to test some hot water in it overnight and measure temps before/after.
Sorry, still new to a lot of this. Not sure what highly fermentable means. Is that where you either get wort with a lot of body/flavor or you get wort that’s all fermentable sugar (and not so much body/flavor)?
Interestingly enough (not sure how familar you are with the Anvil Foundry) it does have a lid with a gasket and clamps to seal it. The lid has a hole for the recirculation tube but a piece of tape or something would fix that. Sealing it up would be easy.
Tangentially, Anvil sent an email out a few months reminding us all not to boil with the lid on. Apparently some poor sod found out the hard way. So… it does seal quite well.
I wonder if I have a newer version, I have zero problems with the lid gasket.
Joe, highly fermentable means more of the complex starches have been converted to simple sugars. You end up with a lower final gravity, higher abv, and dryer, less full bodied beer. This can be undesirable or desirable based on beer style and personal preference.
It actually has me thinking I will try an overnight mash for my next light beer.
Anvil does seem to revise them periodically. I bought mine sometime last summer and one of the big design changes was the control box moved from the bottom, to the top. I think there was another fix involving the reset pin on the bottom as well. I’m glad to see Anvil is working to improve it though (their support staff gets an A+ too).
No problem. Thanks for the explanation about the wort, guys!
Joe, I did an overnight mash in my anvil last night, details in the light beer thread in Beer Recipes. I will post when I find out how the beer comes out.
I did an overnight mash in mine last night. Mashed in almost 14# of grain at 150F. Stirred it a few times, didn’t use the recirc pump. As far as electricity usage goes, I had my Watt-a-meter hooked up to it the whole night. Before mashing in, I had it at 100% power and it was pulling 1275 watts. I turned it down to 50% power (as you did) once it reached temp. It only pulled 375 watts when the heater was on. It mashed for 8.5 hours and the total killowatt hours in the morning was .87. Last time I checked I think I was paying under $0.25/KwH so the cost of running this at night is nothing. As long as it doesn’t burn the house down.
The wort was a surprise, but I guess not really when you consider the 8 hour mash. Gravity was 1.064 pre-boil and 1.073 :o when I transferred to the fermenter (around 6.25 gallons). That’s quite a bit higher than last time I brewed this recipe. It was 1.062 when I transferred.
OK, this has my interest piqued now. I could feasibly have my brewday done and cleaned up by 10AM or earlier if overnight mashing leads to good beer for me. Waking up to the smell of mashed barley is a plus, too.
The results for my beer were very good although this was one of my light beer experiments that had some other variables. I definitely think you should try it. Maybe do a familiar recipe and see if you want to play around with the grist and mash temp to make up for an increase in efficiency and fermentability.
Yes, the aroma in the kitchen was an added benefit! I did an iodine test when I got up and thought I could see a little bit of black in the solution yet so turned it up to 152F and left it for an hour (I’ll probably just mash at 152 next time) I was nearly cleaned up by 9:00am and pitched at 9:30 so 10am is certainly a reasonable expectation (plenty of time in the day to brew another batch, too!).
Good to hear. I’m kind of wondering what the effect of the 8 hour mash will have on body, etc. I’ll follow up in a week or two.
