Overnight Mashing: Overview
November 13th, 2021
The world in which we live today moves very fast. So fast that there is sometimes not enough time to do everything we want, including brewing a good beer! To solve this problem, some home brewers have tried to cut their brewing day in half by letting their mash go on all night and then finish brewing the next day. If the technique allows us to cut our brewing day in two, what about the final result? Do we get a beer similar to a conventional method?
Those who have tried it are unanimous, you get a more fermentable wort and more concentrated in sugar. For very dry beer styles like a saison or a pilsner, no problem, because they are already very dry beers. However, they will have a higher alcohol content. If you want to brew a beer like a stout, you will have to consider adding lactose or maltodextrin to increase the mouthfeel of your beer.
This technique is interesting to compensate for the loss of efficiency observed when brewing a very high alcohol beer. One of our customers tried the technique with our 5e Baron’s Black is Beautiful collaborative kit. He managed to get a final gravity similar to the original recipe, which is more difficult with a conventional technique.
It is important to avoid as much as possible the loss of temperature during the process. Too much temperature loss could lead to acidification of the wort by Lactobacillus bacteria. Furthermore, it has been observed that a beer made with an overnight mash gives a beer with a lower foam retention.
Will you be the next to try this technique?
