What do you do with all the water this hobby generates?

Brewing Processes
1

Hi all,

This may seem like a dumb mundane question on the surface, but hear me out.

This hobby generates & potentially wastes a lot of water. Between what flows through and out the wort chiller to the gallons of starsan, PBW, etc that one makes, to just the water used to clean all equipment, what do you all do with it, and where do you put it when you’re done?

I realize for a lot of you the obvious answer will be “uhh… down the drain?” or “uhh, I dump it outside?” Unfortunately this is not so straightforward an option for me.

Ever since I moved into my house after apartment living for so many years, like many of you I moved from brewing on the stovetop in the kitchen to brewing outside in my garage / driveway area. Well, I don’t have a garage sink or anything like that, and there’s not really a practical place to put one, so no drains are available to dump water there. I tend to use the garden hose to rinse off and clean equipment as I go, and all the water from my wort chiller gets channeled into buckets, since there is no sewer or storm drain for it to drain to (we live in an unincorporated area, and thus are on septic).

I had been in the habit of just dumping the chiller water I collect in buckets onto our plants, but in the process this ends up creating more problems as the high volume water flow just makes a terrible mess in terms of scattering mulch, DG, dirt and whatever other material our plants are in & around ALL over the place, making an otherwise beautiful and manicured yard somewhat unsightly.

I’ve thought about recycling the water somehow (ie: into a rain barrel or something of that nature), but honestly don’t know whether we’d be able to use it (all our plants are already on a sprinkler system), and would worry of just hatching a bunch of mosquitos in the standing water.

Sorry, I know this was a lot. Just wanted to know if anyone else has problems like this and if so what the solution might be?

Thanks!

2

maybe buy some airtight sealable container to store it in, i assume mosquitoes can’t breed/live if theres no way for them to enter/exit a container? then use it on the lawn over time.

are you in california?

tbh where i am, water is so cheap (i used to live in a place where it was cheaper) i don’t really think about water as a cost. though i guess it probably ends up costing a few dollars for brew water/wort chiller etc per brew.

3

I’m in SoCal, and definitely think consciously about the water I generate. I won’t pretend I recycle absolutely all water, but I do make a fair effort.

Some ways I reuse water (not all of which work for the OP):

  • When the outflow is running hot, I use it to clean kegs (PBW+hot water).
  • Some hot water gets saved to clean brewing equipment.
  • I water all of our potted plants
  • Some water gets saved for aquarium water changes
  • If I have an upcoming brew session, I’ll save some for that.
  • If any of our emergency water stores need to be swapped out or refreshed (we’re in earthquake country, so have a fair sized reserve just in case), I’ll refresh it.

It is hard, though, to use up all of the generated water, even in the best of circumstances. I try my best. I have gone more to doing the final chill in the fermentation chamber, which will shave off some time (and save water).

4

I live in Northern California, where water is valuable and I try to pour as little as possible down the drain. I save water from the immersion chiller in buckets, and use it (via a watering can) to water household plants and landscaping. Only about 2/3 of our landscaping is on a drip irrigation system, so there are plenty of plants happy to get my brewing water. Cleaning is done in the kitchen sink, and the first bit of water, with PBW in it, and the first rinse goes down the drain. After the first rinse the rinse water goes into buckets. I reuse StarSan until it gets cloudy, so that doesn’t generate much waste - maybe 1/2 to 1 gallon per month.

If  you want to store some water in a barrel there are collection systems designed to store rain water without growing insects or algae. I don’t know much about them, but they are increasing in popularity.

5

Only “waste” water is from cooling the wort. I direct the hot water from the wort chiller into a barrel. I’ll use some of the hot water for clean up, etc.

When we do laundry the cooled water in the barrel is transferred into our washing machine.

6

Try to reconfigure your sprinkler irrigation system into a drip system, then feed your drip system from your brewery.

7

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

8

Excellent solution.

9

You mention that you’re in a rural area on septic so I assume you have some space.  You could build a dry well or a rain garden to handle any grey water and filter it back into the earth.  Sanitizer and pbw should be fine to go into septic at the homebrew scale.

10

I live in an area where water is abundant and cheap and never gave it much thought about waste water BUT, after reading your post I started thinking about how easy it would be to feed my waste cooling water hose up and out of the basement window into a 55gallon poly barrel to water my gardens. Hook up a ball valve to the barrel and slow feed through a drip hose!! Excellent second use!

11

Would like to hear/know more about this.

12

There are many articles and videos describing the process, like this one:

13

I should amend my response to “I would like to hear about this from another AHA member actually using this process.” I’ve read about no-chill before (I vaguely recall the Australian angle) but I read a lot of things on the web, and take them with the usual grain of salt. Does this work equally well for all styles, how long does it take, can I use the food-safe buckets I ferment in, at what point do I drain into the fermenter, etc.

Right now my water reduction technique is to drain from my Mash & Brew into a sanitized 5-gallon kettle (I do 3-gallon batches), let it cool down for ca. 20 minutes, set it in an 8-gallon kettle with ice water, and whirlpool. The water then goes to a shrub that benefits from a little extra water now and then. It’s not bad, and there’s really no water waste. I would be interested in trying a small no-chill batch, however.

14

I’ve made several no chill batches in differwnt styles. Drew does it more often than not.  It seems to work for any style, with the caveat that for IPA you need to adjust late additions to account for it.

15

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.

16

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.

17

I run it into my washing machine.

18

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.

19

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

20

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