steeping grains

[justin27]

Can I heat my water. Add my grains and leave it overnight?
Remove the grains the next morning.
Then add my DME that night and then boil?

[wortchillergoal]

I am not sure that leaving the grains over night would be a good idea. i know that if you go over a certain temp, 170 I think, you will pull excess tannins out of the hulls which can give an off flavor to your beer. I would be afraid of the same by letting them sit in the water for such a long period of time.

I could be wrong and if I am, one of the more practiced brewers will correct me.

[Fast_Eddy]

I wouldn't do it.

1) You might wind up slightly souring your specialty grain mixture if all lacto isn't killed.

2) You might get, as wort suggests, excess astringency as a result of tannin extraction.

3) It just doesn't save THAT much time.

[HogieWan]

You're going to have some cooled wort sitting overnight. Meaning any wild yeasts or bacteria are going to jump in and start doing their thing. This is exactly what some people do to get a little bit of lambic sourness in their beer (leaving some wort out for a while and then boiling that with more malts later). This may end up tasting good, depending on the type of beer (guinness clone comes to mind), but I doubt its what you are looking for.