[MNWayne]

Years ago, when my only avenue for temperature reduction was an immersion chiller, I went through a lot of water.  Now I use my IC to drop the temp to about 120F (saving the water) and use my glycol chiller to arrive at pitch temp.  The saved water is used for cleaning, any water not immediately used for cleaning is further saved for later sanitizing, or more cleaning, there's never a shortage of things to clean.

[Cliffs]

I run it into my washing machine.

[chinaski]

I run it into my washing machine.

Ditto- one of the perks of having my brewery part of my laundry area.  In winter, I'll put snow in the utility sink and cool my kettle a good bit with it before using a chiller.

[spurviance]

I brew near our pool and will move the boil kettle with IC in place to a step in my pool.  The pool water helps cool the wort and the IC water goes into the pool, water that would have eventually been added to maintain pool water level, especially in the summer here in Northern Ca.   Bucket with StarSan water typically ends up being dumped in the pool, helping lower the pH, reducing the amount of muriatic acid I would have added that week.   I admit to other areas of my process that I’m not always a great steward of water.   This thread has given me some good ideas

[kgs]

I've started no-chill on my all-grain batches; works fine with no wasted water.

Excellent solution.

Would like to hear/know more about this.

It's easy, you don't even need a plastic cube like some brewers use. I take my kettle off the heat, put the lid back on, seal around the lid with plastic wrap and put it in the cellar, usually by noon. I bring it back upstairs around 9-10 the next morning, transfer to a bucket and pitch the yeast.
So far I've done a Dunkel bock and a pilsner with good results. I also have an ipa to bottle in a couple of days.

Thank you! A lot of good ideas in this thread and this right here is very helpful.

[Steve Ruch]

I've started no-chill on my all-grain batches; works fine with no wasted water.

Excellent solution.

Would like to hear/know more about this.

It's easy, you don't even need a plastic cube like some brewers use. I take my kettle off the heat, put the lid back on, seal around the lid with plastic wrap and put it in the cellar, usually by noon. I bring it back upstairs around 9-10 the next morning, transfer to a bucket and pitch the yeast.
So far I've done a Dunkel bock and a pilsner with good results. I also have an ipa to bottle in a couple of days.

Thank you! A lot of good ideas in this thread and this right here is very helpful.

You're welcome. Most of the time keeping it simple gives good results.

[pete b]

I didn’t think I had anything to add to this until I brewed yesterday. I was thinking about what I did with the water from chilling but a big part of my water savings comes before that.
I save the plastic frozen pouches that come when I occasionally order perishable food online. When I brew inside I put 8 or 10 of these in the sink and run cold water into the sink and use a pump to run that water through the chiller. Like others I save the hot and warm water for sanitizing and cleaning, and I run the rest out the window. When I cool wort outside I fill a cooler with cold water and those ice packs and put my old copper immersion chiller in that and run the water through there before going to the wort chiller.
Either way the wort chills so fast that the water not used for cleaning is pretty minimal. I originally thought of this for speed because there is still a big delta between the water going through the chiller and the wort as I approach pitching temps and that last ten degrees goes by a lot faster.
Because I live in a rural area and have a well I always thought of water as free and as long as I put unused water back into the earth I was fine. I have since realized that a well pump draws a lot of electricity.

[Bel Air Brewing]

Living in North Texas, and having a swimming pool in the back yard, we have virtually zero waste water.

In the cooler months, October through May, we use the pool water to chill the wort from boiling to pitching temperature. This is done using a submersible pump placed into the pool, and literally recirculating cold pool water through our Hydra Chiller. We also use a copper coil pre-chiller in a bucket of ice, to get the water temp down near 32F.

In the warm months, June through September, we run tap water through the Hydra to chill the wort. The exhaust water goes straight into the pool, helping to compensate for evaporation.

What clean up water we have goes straight into watering our lawn, or flower beds.

Previous to the above, we would collect the hot waste water from the chilling process and put it in the washing machine. My wife got "free hot water" to do laundry!

[narvin]

Because I live in a rural area and have a well I always thought of water as free and as long as I put unused water back into the earth I was fine. I have since realized that a well pump draws a lot of electricity.

I calculated that my well pump (1/2 HP, 230V rated at 6 amps) costs about 2 cents per 100 gallons.  That's 20 minutes of 5gpm, so I don't really sweat it, but I still try not to put too much down the septic since it can push effluent out before it's had time to break down.  YMMV

[redrocker652002]

Can't add much to this, but I made a homemade bucket and keg cleaner where i use about 3 gallons and a pond pump.  I do my bucket, lid, keg (if it is empty) and all the other smaller parts at one time.  Then, I dump the cleaner water, rinse the cleaner from everything.  The sanitizer, I mix in my fermenter bucket, transfer it thru the spigot and hoe into the keg, then hook up the CO2 and pump it thru the tap to clean and sanitize it.  Probably not the most efficient way to do it, but I feel I am saving a bit of water.  I try and have everything ready to go and do it all at one time. 

[pete b]

Because I live in a rural area and have a well I always thought of water as free and as long as I put unused water back into the earth I was fine. I have since realized that a well pump draws a lot of electricity.

I calculated that my well pump (1/2 HP, 230V rated at 6 amps) costs about 2 cents per 100 gallons.  That's 20 minutes of 5gpm, so I don't really sweat it, but I still try not to put too much down the septic since it can push effluent out before it's had time to break down.  YMMV

That’s sort of reassuring but I don’t know all that info on my pump. Do you have an artesian well? I am pumping from almost 409 feet deep.

[goose]

The rule of thumb that I have heard is that it takes about 8 gallons of water usage to produce 1 gallon of beer.  I don't use nearly that much from my well since my water sucks and I get RO water from the local water softener store ($0.50 per gallon).  The biggest usage is chilling and rinsing after cleaning. That water all goes down the drain, unfortunately, .
Although I have a hot tub that I could fill with the chilling water, I don't use raw water in it because the black manganese in the raw water reacts with the bromine in the tub and makes the tub water brown and cloudy.  So I am kind of stuck and deal with it as best I can.  I sometimes use it to water the shrubs and trees in my yard in dry years.

[4dogbrewer]

I am on a well here where I live. In the summer I direct all water to my pool. I use my first runnings from my chiller to pails and use that for clean up.

[Bel Air Brewing]

The rule of thumb that I have heard is that it takes about 8 gallons of water usage to produce 1 gallon of beer.

As we always brew in 10 gallon batches, do we need to figure 80 gallons of water? Does this include the water used for chilling? In our case, we recirculate pool water, so we might not use a full 80 gallons, or your rule of 8 to 1.

[goose]

The rule of thumb that I have heard is that it takes about 8 gallons of water usage to produce 1 gallon of beer.

As we always brew in 10 gallon batches, do we need to figure 80 gallons of water? Does this include the water used for chilling? In our case, we recirculate pool water, so we might not use a full 80 gallons, or your rule of 8 to 1.

This number assumes all of the water used in the entire brewing process, including mash liquor, sparge liquor, chilling, and cleaning.  Obviously, if you recirculate water from another source like a pool for chilling, you will use less from your brewing water source.  If you know how much water you recirculate from your pool for chilling, you can adjust this ratio downward for your total brewing water needs.  The rule of thumb assumes that things like cleaning and chilling water go down the drain.

A lot of commercial breweries capture the chilling water in their hot liquor tanks (and if you live in a warmer climate like FL where the brewing water from the tap is in the 70 degree F range, in their cold liquor tanks as well) to use for the next batch to save money and cut down water costs.  I wish I could do this, but my water totally sucks and I have to use RO water to brew with.