Long Mash

[Fil]

I have a handful, if that, of all grain brewdays behind me the last of which was a quick 8 hours long, but something went wrong and its not the best ale i have produced.

I am going to have a brewday on saturday, and have sorted my recipe and got all the goodies to go in. Thing is i went a bit mad and got 30kg of malt and 4 packs of hops + yeasts.. so have the ingredients for more than one brew..

I have all day almost saturday, and even a few hours sunday afternoon/evening too.

My books talk of overnight mashing, but not overnight, duuring the morning, and most of the afternoon mashing.

would it be foolish to mix a mash up last thing saturday and leave it till the following evening to sparge n boil? part of me is thinking that the enzymes might chop up all the complex sugars which might result in a very thin beer?? Ive read a bit , understood some, but am on shakey ground here..

is there a style of beer i am unaware of that takes to prolonged mashing, Or could i halt the mash by allowing it to cool rapidly after so many hours n let it sit in 'cold (room temp) stasis' till im ready to sparge (Im thinkin i would need to batch sparge??), the downside of this is nasty bugs might breed in it and taint it?

Im pretty sure its a bad idea, but in case its not, does anyone have a recipe for an ale that would like such a long mash that i can brew with pale malt, crystal malt, EKG, fuggles, challenger, n bobek styrians, i have s-04 yeast and a pack of us05 to try.

tia

[boingy]

Overnight mashing is practised by quite a few people but I don't think many will leave it all the following day too. It would probably be OK but I'd suggest an alternative split of mashing and sparging on Saturday and leaving the wort in the boiler with a lid (or cling-filmed) until you can get the boil going. The wort hitting the boiler will be hot enough to kill off most bugs and any that remain will be wiped out by the boil.

[Fil]

Overnight mashing is practised by quite a few people but I don't think many will leave it all the following day too. It would probably be OK but I'd suggest an alternative split of mashing and sparging on Saturday and leaving the wort in the boiler with a lid (or cling-filmed) until you can get the boil going. The wort hitting the boiler will be hot enough to kill off most bugs and any that remain will be wiped out by the boil.

Cheers boingy. Makes sense, but if im going that far into the brew i may as well just continue n boil. which is probably the best option, one long brewday with 2 batches brewed.

[boingy]

I guess the other option would be to get the second mash on sometime on Sunday.
Assuming you can heat the water on a timer then mashing in does not actually take very long.

Have you thought about what happens when both brews have finished fermenting? Do you have enough barrels/kegs/bottles for all that beer? It seems obvious but I've had one or two close ones where I've had to leave the beer in the FV an extra day or two because the second cornie is not quite empty. (Must buy more cornies....)

[Fil]

I have the capacity to keg and bottle upto 3 further brews, if i can set a precedent for a 2 batch brewday that will be great. the weather will be getting too cold for me to brew on the patio soon .. my bottle neck is with fermentation and clearing vessels, but i can work round that ok..

[Fil]

well it was a moot point after all Saturday was a wash so i just had this afternoon, and managed to get a brew on. tried batch sparging, c**ked it up.. but got 25l with an OG of 1044..

[boingy]

well it was a moot point after all Saturday was a wash so i just had this afternoon, and managed to get a brew on. tried batch sparging, c**ked it up.. but got 25l with an OG of 1044..

I don't know what you were aiming for but that will make a respectable beer.

[Fil]

fingers crossed boingy.. the c**k up was first attempt at batch sparging, and i mashed it with the top up water so ended up with a thin mash.. but i think i was saved by a quality of the grain as it seemed to all settle and form a stiff bed which took a good stir when it came to drawing, i also drew off less than expected on the first drawing and over compensated for the second batch .. but still managed to hit the target OG with a 2ltr surplus was aiming for 23l. i had added a tad more malt to compensate for a loss in efficiency. Not that i was an efficient fly sparger .

there did seem to be a few stalks in the malt?? not seen that before, but only done a handfull of AG brews.