Spreading Out the Process

Is there any good reason why I shouldn’t mash/sparge one day and brew the next?

#1 The enzymes are still working.

Keeping the wort overnight, eh?  I guess it may depend on whether it picks up any bacteria before the boil.  This is sort of the way you could make a Berliner Weisse.  I would suggest that you find a way to keep the wort as hot as possible, but it should be OK.

What I do is bring the wort up to at least 180 degrees, and preferably up to a short boil if it is going to be longer than a couple hours (like over night), cover and come back later. You definitely want to bring it up to at least 180 degrees to stop conversion. I have never encountered any problems from this, except for more consumption of energy.

on a similar note could you freeze part of the wort (granted probably only 3gal batch) then brew a few weeks later with different steeping grains, hops and put on the yeast cake from the first half?

+1.  If you want to avoid the sour mash flavor, check out this article and try to avoid the risks!
http://www.byo.com/stories/techniques/article/indices/9-all-grain-brewing/1723-sour-mashing-techniques

I’ll just add this again, since I seem to have been ignored the last time  :wink: If you bring it to a boil, and cover it, you won’t have any problems. I have done this probably 50 times over the years with no issues. If it was that easy to get infected none of us could survive an 8 hour lag.

if you’re going to do it - do as keith says.

one of my closest brewing buddies did the overnight mashing for over a year and was consistently getting 6-7% higher yeast attenuation than the top end of the average range.  beers were way too dry.  gotta knock out the enzymatic activity to prevent this.

Great info! Thanks! I’m not saying I’m actually going to do it, but it’s good to know I can if I get lazy or if something goes wrong.

…or you get too drunk!  :wink:

The best Maibock I ever brewed I did an overnight mash in the oven. I set the oven on the lowest setting it could go on, which was something like 160, put the mash in at 150 and covered it and also added something like 2 lbs of cara pils. I went back and looked at the recipe a few years later and it was so crazy I never attempted to brew it again. But it was fantastic and tasted positively German.

I agree with the thought of bringing the wort up to boil after mash out… and then leaving it for a few hours with the burner off.

I have done this a few times with no noticeable ill effects.  The flavors are a tad different, but only really noticeable when doing a side by side comparison.

Even the best planned brew day is sometimes interrupted by a sick kid at school, or a need to hit the store for lunch groceries!

Also, I know a person that has an all electric system, and due to time constraints, mashes the night before, brings the wort just up to boil, covers, catches 6 to 8 hours of sleep, and has their electric system on a timer to turn on 20 minutes before they wake up.  That way the wort is nearing boiling and they do not have to wait the 40 minutes for their wort to heat back up.  (Still need to be in attendance to ensure no boil overs, however.)  It is a bit more work overall, but it fits into his schedule.  Kind of seperates his brew day into two 3 hour blocks instead of one steady 6 hour block.  When you have kids… haveing 6 hours available can be hard!

So I say go for it if you like!

+1 to challenging with little ones running around. Adapt and overcome…

When I had a small mash tun and a keggle for a boil kettle, I would  do 2 mashes.  After the first one I would bring the wort to a boil and let simmer while doing the second mash.  Then I would combine the 2 mash runoffs and proceed as usual.

I used to let the wort sit overnight all the time.  I started brewing when I was in college, and I didn’t always pace myself.  Sometimes, the ratio of beer inside to outside (of my belly) just got too high.  Anyway, I never had any bad results.  Of course, 22 year old men aren’t the pickiest consumers.

Well, I do have picky standards, and I often collect the wort before going to bed, and get up and boil in the morning. This is a great way to cut down on the “time away from family stuff” (especially on the weekends) that a brew day requires.

Even if you do not heat up the wort, the temp will be 160-170 at night, and still around 130 in the morning.  That is still very hot, and I doubt anything bad can survive in that temp.  (and you are still going to boil anyway).  Sure you could heat it up even hotter, and thus it would be even warmer in the am.

But no, there is no reason you can not do this.  I can’t tell any difference in beers made this way vs doing it all in one day.  And for the record I have been brewing for nearly 10 years and have taken gold medals in a few competitions. 
cheers
don

I’ve done a two-day process for at least a year now (20+ 10-gal & 15-gal) batches.

Day 1: mill grains, mash in 80qt Coleman Extreme, batch sparge, put liquid in brute barrel in walk-in cooler
Day 2: dump wort in kettle, brew, chill, pitch yeast

Total time each day of about 3 hrs. I usually do each step in the morning, so there is about 20hours between when the brute barrel goes into the cooler and when it is boiling the next day.  I have never noticed any problems; and a Maibock I brewed with this process just took a second place in the New York State Fair; and a Helles took a first place in the same comp.

-red