Brewing Over Two Night?

[cooraf]

is it possible to brew over two nights? say for instance one night mash and then sparge and siphon into a suitable large container, and then the next night boil it up and add hops?

reason being is my weekend are getting busier and dont have time to get a brew down...

has anyone tried this or are there other options?

 

[boingk]

I assume this would be possible if you cubed the wort after sparging, or otherwise put in a suitable large air-tight container. You'd want something with minimal head-space as well. A 30L fermenter would probably be the go.

Aside from the obvious possibility of infection & oxidation if you don't sanitise/store properly, I see no problem other than an increased gas bill due to having to heat it up twice.

Cheers - boingk

 

[clean brewer]

I wouldnt, havnt done it but have read about it going sour being left for that long.... :icon_vomit:

Its only another 90mins or so for the boil!!!!!!! :unsure:

:icon_cheers: CB

 

[Goofinder]

has anyone tried this or are there other options?

Don't work or sleep!

How much time do you have?

Set HLT on a timer (if electric). 60 min mash, 60 min boil. No chill.

You should be able to go from start to cleaned up in under 4 hours.

 

[alowen474]

If you wanted to stop after sparge, get your kettle on heat so it hits the boil right at the end of sparge. This will kill any nasties.
Put it in your no chill cube and boil it up later on, could be days.

 

[stillscottish]

I've done overnight and long mashes a couple of times. This is from memory now but I think, add your mash water a couple of degrees hotter to compensate for the longer mash time. Set your mash at beddie bye time or in the morning and when you're ready, sparge and boil.

 

[fcmcg]

I happened upon 30 litres of post sparge/pre boil wort from a bloke i know...
Now this was sparged Fri arvo...
Poured at 60 degree and stored in sealed buckets...
Picked it up Sunday...
Started to have a sour "tang", but seeing he gave me 150g of east kent goldings for free...i though...what the hell...i'll boil it...no chill it and see what happens.....
I wouldn't recomend doing it unless your really sanitary...and i think this beer will have some lacto flavours...which may be ok given the og was 1070 and i've made abig beer that is not to any style...

 

[Snow]

I've done overnight and long mashes a couple of times. This is from memory now but I think, add your mash water a couple of degrees hotter to compensate for the longer mash time. Set your mash at beddie bye time or in the morning and when you're ready, sparge and boil.

He's talking about doing over 2 nights - not the next morning.

I suggest you don't brew over 2 nights without first sterilising your wort by boiling it for at least 10 mins. But then you may as well boil for another 50 mins then no-chill and you can then ferment whenever you want. If you don't sterilise your wort, you WILL get infected wort over the 24 hr period.

Cheers - Snow.

 

[manticle]

Contrary to popular opinion (and flying slightly in the face of more experienced brewers I say yes).

I have brewed a couple of times like this. Because you are boiling for 60+ minutes the next day you shouldn't be risking infection. As for oxidation, you should treat the wort as gently as you would during a normal brewday. I have had infections but none of them happened in the brews I did this with. No oxidation/staling issues either.

@Snow - if I understand correctly he's mashing one night, THEN boiling the next night with hops additions so the wort will be boiled for an hour.

There may be sound reasoning against this but I have done it with no issues. I'd recommend a mashout though to fix the wort profile, in case you don't do it by default.

 

[Snow]

No no no it needs to be boiled the night of the mash. There is so much bacteria on/in the grain, often all it takes is for a few hours after the wort has cooled for infections to take hold and really off flavours (I mean make you spew - "off") to present in the wort which no amount of boiling and hopping will get rid of, regardless of whether you kill the infection the next night. I know this from personal experience and talking to other experienced brewers.

Not worth the risk, IMO.

Rant over

Cheers - Snow.

 

[MHB]

Yes Yes Yes Snow is dead right!
Not just that, last time I counted there were about 27 identified enzymes that can act on a mash quit thinking that alpha and beta amylase are the whole story, unless you can know for sure what each of them does and when it is denatured, boil the wort.
MHB

 

[manticle]

Mate I'll take your word for it. You've probably been brewing longer than I've been out of my teens.

I have done it and haven't experienced what you've described and I still reckon if you store it well (ie similar to no chill, wack in the fridge) then you might get away with it. I did. I'm not going to state that as dogmatic fact though. Two experiences does not a scientific fact make.

Reading your suggestion again (I think I misunderstood the first time) you are suggesting if this has to be done

1. Mash
2. sparge
3. boil for ten minutes

Next night boil for 60 with hop additions?

The only reason I've done it before is because I wanted to put down a brew (stupidly my first decoction) but had limited time because I had to go to work. I went through all the mash steps, drained into a cube and squeezed out air then put in the fridge. Next day I boiled - beautiful hefe was the result. Maybe I was lucky.

 

[RdeVjun]

Yep, I have to support the "don't do it" camp on this. Like a few correspondents, I've mashed overnight then lautered and boiled the next morning on several occasions with no major problems. However, once I left it mashing until after lunchtime for phase two (I was quite dusty- which would explain why I couldn't finish it the night before ) and was very suss on the odour (approaching the horseblanket aroma- ahem...) and taste (abnormally acidic, not a pleasant wort). After fermentation it hyperattenuated quite badly to 1.004, I was none too impressed with the resulting beer either and Snow is quite right, no amount of hops can completely mask the naff flavour and aroma. So I wouldn't leave un- boiled wort/ un- lautered mash much longer than overnight, the enzymes that come into play will screw it up, while leaving it even longer will ensure the bacterial effects become far from desirable. Sure, boiling it afterwards is going to kill off any potential fermentation infections, but by then it could be too late to salvage a beer as we know it. I just can't advise the practice...
I realise the OP was talking about lautering as part of the first phase, but IMO it probably doesn't make much difference. An overnight mashing does give some quite decent efficiency numbers in my experience, however the attenuation is often extreme. It might be OK to put it on late at night and get cracking with the boil early in the morning but I wouldn't be leaving it any longer.

My 2c... :icon_cheers:

 

[MHB]

Probably not best practice but I cant see it causing any major problems (however it isnt what was in your previous post), you need to sterilise the wort and kill (denature) all the enzymes.
If you do that fine, of course you are incurring a much bigger energy budget, you have payed for the heat to get it to boiling, to boil for 10 minutes, then the energy to cool the wort back down and to heat it back up again. Just to get back to where you were when you knocked out the wort.
Not as good as planning your brew day properly, mind you I think I recall my first decoction going way over time, if you must you must.
MHB

RdeVjun
I often like to think of brewing as creating the worlds most infectable substance and then trying to control what lives in it.
so Yep!
M

 

[Thirsty Boy]

what about if you include a decent mashout @ say 78C - followed by a no-chill style cube and store?

78C for 10 or 15mins (standard-ish mashout rest) is quite a few pasteurization units and at a guess they might be enough to allow you to store the wort for 24hrs without either suffering from any serious excessive enzyme or bacterial action.

I am totally with the "don't do it" camp if you are talking draining an isothermal mash out at say 66 and holding that.... but if you get it up to 78??? I'm not so sure you are looking certain disaster in the face.

I have done a few gluten free brews using flours as my starch source.. very bad lautering ensued - 24 hours worth of it. And on 3 occasions so far, hanging a bag full of mash over a kettle and leaving it for a day to drain did not result in (noticeably) infected wort - but on each occasion the mash was well and truly raised to 80C and kept there for more than 10 minutes.

So - I think that wort is insanely infectable and its risky - but if you do a mash out and store your wort in a sealed container - you might well get away with this in a semi reliable fashion. I think its worth an experimental try or two to find out if it works in your system.

Mind you.. I also think that to do it with any modicum of safety - you will only be saving about 60 mins on day 1 which will cost you twice as much extra on day two... so perhaps its not really worth it?? Perhaps it is.

I think that there are also other things to consider that might save you as much or more time. Rough guesses of potential time savers follow.

No-chill - minimum 30min saving
An electric HLT with timer so water is pre-heated on brew day - minimum 30min saving
A bigger Burner/element - not sure but certainly some.
No-sparge (or single runnings batch sparge if you want to call it that) - 15mins ish over a normal batch sparge and 30 over a fly sparge
BIAB - perhaps 15-30min faster than the next fastest method I have used (conservatively)
Weigh and Mill on the previous day
Clean on the following day (but don't forget... its nasty if you leave it a week!!)

You go with weigh and mill on previous day, electric urn with timer, BIAB, no-chill, clean on following day... your "brew day" could be a sub 4 hour effort and I reckon closer to 3.

Last BIAB demo Spills and I did & G&G .. we arrived at 9:00am, set up from scratch in a foreign environment with unfamiliar gear, heated our water, brewed and cubed a batch, cleaned up after ourselves... and walked out the door by 1:30.

4&1/2 hours in the worst possible circumstances - you can take an hour off that easy if you are willing to spread your effort over the previous and following day.

TB

 

[mckenry]

is it possible to brew over two nights? say for instance one night mash and then sparge and siphon into a suitable large container, and then the next night boil it up and add hops?

reason being is my weekend are getting busier and dont have time to get a brew down...

has anyone tried this or are there other options?

Not worth the risk. Take a sickie if you have to.... You can shorten brew days by going a 60min mash, 60min boil. Sure you already know this.

Imagine spending TWO nights brewing to make a drain beer.

Just wait til you have the time or do as I do when I need beer fast - buy a FWK - serves two purposes. Still good beer and a new No chill cube for the future.

 

[crundle]

Due to some emergencies cropping up from time to time, I have had to do something similar, and have had no problems so far. It is probably not best practice, but if you have to do it, then so be it.

I would suggest that it is best to mash, sparge, then get the wort up to the boil, and then cube it (although I have left mine in the urn (wrapped up nicely with the lid on and blankets to hold in the heat as much as possible). You can then pour it back into the boiler and get it up to the boil, and start your hop additions. I have done this several times with no ill effects, but boiling is good to stop the enzyme activity in the first place, and secondly to sterilise the wort to a certain extent for a certain time.

The longer you leave it the more chance of there being a problem, but if it is boiled first then the lid is put on the boiler and it is left wrapped in a doonah, there is little chance of nasties getting in over the next 24 hours. The next boil will kill anything that *might* have grown in there in that time, and the hop additions of the boil wont hurt none either!

As I said, not best practice, but we can't all have the time to spare in one hit to brew either......

cheers,

Crundle

 

[manticle]

what about if you include a decent mashout @ say 78C - followed by a no-chill style cube and store?

78C for 10 or 15mins (standard-ish mashout rest) is quite a few pasteurization units and at a guess they might be enough to allow you to store the wort for 24hrs without either suffering from any serious excessive enzyme or bacterial action.

I am totally with the "don't do it" camp if you are talking draining an isothermal mash out at say 66 and holding that.... but if you get it up to 78??? I'm not so sure you are looking certain disaster in the face.

This is what I was trying to get at. Mashout temps should pasteurise and fix the profile and denature any other enzymes shouldn't they? More than happy to defer to the more experienced but I'd just like to increase my knowledge.

To be clear - I'd never recommend this as regular practice but at a pinch it's worked for me before.

 

[raven19]

I have mashed overnight once thus far. That stout is in secondary atm.

If time is an issue, how about mashing in before work in the morning, then sparge when you get home? Then boil once kiddies have gone to bed?

My most recent brew arvo (with preparation of filling the electric HLT and crushing the grain prior) was all done in 3hrs, 10 minutes. Just a simple single infusion 60min mash, batch sparged, and a 60 minute boil. Into the No Chill cube, done and dusted in just over 3hrs.

I presume BIAB could be even quicker, when incorporating a 'dunk bag into bucket sparge' method?

I hope this helps. :icon_cheers: