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Author Topic: What do you do with all the water this hobby generates?  (Read 2508 times)

Offline BrewBama

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What do you do with all the water this hobby generates?
« Reply #30 on: April 11, 2022, 08:22:42 am »
The rule of thumb that I have heard is that it takes about 8 gallons of water usage to produce 1 gallon of beer. …

For my 3.5 gal batches, I use ~40 gallons water total on brewday (brewing, temp control, cooling, cleaning, and sanitizing):

7 gallons brewhaus liquor
4 gallons temp control (HERMS — harvested for cleaning)
20 gallons cooling (4-5 trips in HERMS)
4 gallons cleaning (additional to HERMS harvest)
5 gallons sanitizing

Add another ~10 gallons for cleaning tasks on non brewdays (keg cleaning, fermenter cleaning, etc..)

So… at 14 gallons water per gallon of beer I am WAY over the rule of thumb. BOO!
« Last Edit: April 11, 2022, 08:35:24 am by BrewBama »

narvin

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Re: What do you do with all the water this hobby generates?
« Reply #31 on: April 11, 2022, 09:27:37 am »

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.

It's a regular well with a submersible pump, but only 100 ft deep.  You may have a 1 or 2 HP pump but I don't think it would be significantly more expensive.

The installers left the label with the pump specs on the pressure tank.


Offline soymateofeo

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Re: What do you do with all the water this hobby generates?
« Reply #32 on: April 21, 2022, 11:49:25 pm »
I bathe with my chiller water.    that's so not true.  But I do limit my waste water in these ways.

1. I make my own reverse osmosis water. Instead of sending the waste water down the drain, I send it to a gray water system that I use to water the lawn. Somebody told me me that the waste water will add salts to my lawn but I soak the s==t out of it every now and then.  It is totally low tech.  I drilled a hole in my wall and run the water to a rain barrel that either gravity feeds to my lawn or I pump it with my chiller pump to where I want to use it.

2. I chill my wort down to 100-115 through my plate chiller.  I send the waste water to the same rain barrel and let it chill or I collect it and use it to clean because it is hot AF.   

3. When my wort hits 100-115, I use my cooler pump, pre chiller chingadera and with 3 gallons of ice or 20 lbs of ice from dollar tree, I can chill it down to 65 in less than 10 minutes. 

4. when I mix my star san, I use RO so I can save it and I use it to soak my water bottles, cutting boards, coffee pot, etc.   

Good luck.  Find what works for you.