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Over Night Mesh

amasterj

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Because of time restraints I have been doing an over night mesh. I heat my water up to the temp suggested by BS for a single infusion batch sparge recipe. Put in the grain and then bring my mesh tun in for the night. Usually around 8 to 9 hours.  I only lose about 8 to 10 degrees over night. I have had pretty good success doing this. Hitting my OG's perfectly. It does tend to make the beer a little darker then the recipe calls for. So I make a slight adjustment in my grains to compensate for that.  I am a relative newbie to all grain brewing and Beer Smith. I am just curious if anyone knows what I am doing to my beer by doing it this way. I see no profile that takes this method into account. Is there a way to set BS up to account for what I am doing? Should I be making some adjustments to temps, water etc.?
 
Someone recently talked about over night mashing.  He mashed late in the day, if I remember correctly, and decided to leave it over night and boil in the morning.  His mash turned sour, ruining his efforts.  What you're doing might lead to unexpected and unwanted results.
 
If you search online there is lots of info on the subject. I don't believe I am leaving it long enough to develop any souring. Although I read that is a concern. I am more interested in what it is doing to the sugars, should I be doing a hotter sparge?
 
amasterj said:
If you search online there is lots of info on the subject. I don't believe I am leaving it long enough to develop any souring. Although I read that is a concern. I am more interested in what it is doing to the sugars, should I be doing a hotter sparge?

I don't know what temperature you are sparging at, so there is no way to know the answer to that question.  However, I sparge at temperatures that raise my grains to 168F.  Hotter than 168F risks extracting tannins from the grains.  Colder than 168F isn't as efficient at rinsing the sugars from the grains.  If you only get the grains up to about 162F, for example, it isn't a disaster.  It just means that you won't be hot enough to get as much of the sugars into solution, so your efficiency will suffer a little bit.

I do see a little bit of a draw back with your process and some advantages.

Advantages:
  • You're leaving the mash go for a long time, so the chances that you don't convert all of the starches to sugars is low.  This is good.
  • You can just put it in at your strike temperatures, get the mash temperature that you want and you're good to go.
  • You're hitting your OG's perfectly

Disadvantages:
  • You're risking a sour mash.
  • You're probably not reaching 168F sparging temperatures.  I say this, because you are losing 8 to 10 degrees F. over night.  I also batch sparge and I have to put my first sparge addition in at nearly boiling to bring it up to 168F.  If I were starting from 8 to 10F lower, as you are, I'd only be able to bring it up to about 158F. This means that your efficiency isn't as good as it could be.  You might need to vorlauf and run some first runnings into your boil pot and heat it up then add it back into your mash to bring the temperature up so that you can hit 168F in order to take full advantage of your long mash times.  If you were to do this, you could probably increase your efficiency enough to cut back on your grain bill a little bit, since you'd be extracting more sugars.  Of course, this is a lot more work and time, plus more gas used for heating.
  • You have already pointed out the disadvantage of a darker color, causing you to have to adjust your grain bills to compensate.
  • Conversion of starches into sugars is usually complete in about 20 minutes in most cases.  Most people mash for 60 to 90 minutes.  Mashes longer than necessary result in loss of heat during the longer mash, creating some issues with getting the heat back into the grain, creating a darker color, with little or no benefit.  However, if you must split your beer making into two days due to time constraints because of your schedule, this is probably a good solution for you.


In summary, each of us has to decide for ourselves what will work for us.  Not what will work for someone else.  I, for example, read as much as I can.  Whether I read it online, from books, from knowledgeable sources to people that I don't know from Adam.  I soak it all in.  I watch videos, watch others brew.  I take in as much as I can.  I've tried to start out with the processes that I know are tried and true and then as I learn, I tweak them to fit me.  My efficiencies are approaching 80% most of the time.  At first, my efficiencies were around 65%, on the exact same equipment.  Our equipment gets better and so do we.

If what you're doing isn't broke, then don't fix it.  I, myself, do something a little differently than I've seen from others.  I mash in a two part mash system (two separate 48 quart MLT's connected by a hose.  This gives me the flexibility of 5, 10, 15 and 20 gallon batches, without having to worry about too shallow of a grain bed or too thick of a grain bed.  My efficiency also went up about 7-8% when I went to it.

Remember, you're making beer, so it must be correct.  Good luck, as you grow and learn.
 
In food service, the "danger zone" is between 40 and 140.  When I tried mashing overnight I didn't do it in the best insulated container and awoke to a frothy mess. Had to pitch it. If you can keep it above 140 the whole time you should be able to avoid it going sour, but I'm not going to guarantee anything.

As far as the sparge goes, I'd suggest a single step decoction mash-out. That's when you remove a third or so of the mash, bring it to a full boil, and mix it back in.  The goal is to add flavor by caramelizing some of the malt while bringing the entire mash up above 160.  Then your sparge isn't doing double duty of heating the mash since it is already hot.

 
Maine Homebrewer said:
As far as the sparge goes, I'd suggest a single step decoction mash-out. That's when you remove a third or so of the mash, bring it to a full boil, and mix it back in.  The goal is to add flavor by caramelizing some of the malt while bringing the entire mash up above 160.  Then your sparge isn't doing double duty of heating the mash since it is already hot.

I'm thinking of trying this.  I've never done it.  My small initial sparge addition is going in at near boiling and I still come up short of 168F most of the time.  I'm fairly confident that single step decoction mash-outs will up my efficiency. 
 
I'm thinking of trying this.  I've never done it.

Ain't much to it. I just eyeball a third or so into a stock pot, carry it upstairs, and bring it to a boil.  Don't pull it off the heat too early. Let it come to a full boil where it looks like boiling grain, not hot cereal. Otherwise it won't carry the heat you need.

amasterj - In your case since your morning mash will be 8-10 degrees cooler than mine or Ickes', I'd decoct somewhere between a third and a half. Otherwise your temp will be short.  That 1/3 is based upon a mash temp of around 150 (and sea level boil temp).
 
Ok, I think I am missing something here. My recipe built with BeerSmith only calls for a strike temp of 164, shooting for a step temp of 150 at 75 minutes. So what is all this talk of 168? I need to do more studying, because I seem to be missing something.
Also I have been doing the over night mesh for 5 or 6 brew sessions with no problems yet. So it seems to be working. Although all the replies were very informative, most of it went right over my head. I really don't understand brewing efficiency or how to calculate it.
 
Ok I think I am understanding, I reread the replies from Ikes and Maine and have a better idea what they were talking about. I was not aware that I needed to bring the Mesh Tun up to 168 when sparging. The BeerSmith recipe just states to sparge at 168. So I assumed that meant to bring my sparge water up to 168 and then sparge with it. But you all are saying I need to bring my mesh tun/grains up to the temp. of 168? How come BS does not account for the in the instructions? Do I have it set up wrong?
 
amasterj said:
Ok I think I am understanding, I reread the replies from Ikes and Maine and have a better idea what they were talking about. I was not aware that I needed to bring the Mesh Tun up to 168 when sparging. The BeerSmith recipe just states to sparge at 168. So I assumed that meant to bring my sparge water up to 168 and then sparge with it. But you all are saying I need to bring my mesh tun/grains up to the temp. of 168? How come BS does not account for the in the instructions? Do I have it set up wrong?

Nope.  You have it set up correctly.  It's just not something that is easily known when you're new to mashing.  You can bring the mash temperature up to 168F one of two ways. 

1.  You can use the "infusion tool" in the tools tab at the top of beersmith.  Put in your current mash temperature.  You recipe will tell you how much sparge water to add with your first sparge addition.  Change it from initial strike to infusion.  Put in all of the correct parameters of your recipe and it will tell you exactly what temperature your infusion water needs to be to bring it up to 168F.

2.  You can do a single step decoction mash out, as was explained earlier on in this thread.  I've found that on some of my higher OG recipes, I need temperatures above boiling to get to 168F, which ain't possible.  So, to get to 168F, I have to add more water at boiling temperatures than my first infusion calls for.  If you have to add more water to get to 168F, then you're not going to have as much clean water to use on your larger sparge addition.  With less water, you won't get as good of a rinsing of the grains.

So, what I will be doing is using the infusion tool.  If I can't get the temperature up to 168F with that small first infusion, because it has to be above boiling temperature, I will be performing single step decoction mash outs.

To answer your question about why BS doesn't account for this, BS doesn't know how much temperature you've actually lost during your mash, so it can't be done.  What BS has is the "infusion tool", so that you can use it and figure it out.

I hope this helped you out.
 
Thanks for all the good help. Still a bit out there for me to wrap my head around, but trying getting a grasp on it. I really want to avoid doing a decoction, just because it is another step. And as I have mention, time spent brewing is hard for me. And that would add to it. But if that is what is needed I will work on it.
Does it work to do a 2 step sparge? Easier to hit the 168 on the final step if you bring the temp up closer to the 168 on the first sparge step?
 
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