One of the toughest things I have found about brewing in the winter is what to do with the water running out of the wort chiller. I brew in the garage, and in the warmer weather i fill up a few buckets with the warm runoff to help with cleaning, but most of the water runs down the driveway. A few weeks ago it was in the teens and I was worried about turning my driveway into a sheet of ice. My co-brewer, John, came up with a great solution - he routed the runoff hose into a flowerbed next to my house.
We had a relatively good brewing day (with the exception of a stuck sparge on the second batch). Wait, did I mention that I was brewing two batches to enter into the NHC? A Quad and an American Amber. We had company during the second batch in the form of John's cousin Ricky. The three of us had a grand time mashing and boiling and adding hops and cooling wort down and pitching yeast. Lots of laughs and we got to learn a thing or two from each other. I would have called it one of my best days yet. After I pitched the yeast on the second batch, it was time to show Ricky my basement bar. I built it last year, and I'm still stoked to show it off when I get the chance. That's when the **** hit the fan.
We walked into my finished basement (17x30) carpeted basement and found an inch of water over 80% of it. Each step you took sounded like you were sloshing through a pond. I nearly cried. We spent the next 7 hours pulling up carpet, throwing away padding, vacuuming water, buying fans, etc. On top of that, the Mrs. was bitching about how stupid John and I were for running water next to the house. "Every idiot knows not to put water against the foundation" I heard 1000 times.
Lucky for me, John is a carpet guy and he hooked me up with new padding and he put the carpet back in place the following Saturday and and that freed us up to brew a 10g batch of a very tasty milk stout.
The second brew day was so smooth that it was almost boring, and I ran the hose down the driveway instead!
But wait. . .
I tell the Mrs that I am much smarter now and that the water won't be a problem this time. You see, I put the water down the driveway this time. Even an idiot like me can learn from his mistakes!
Then. . .
John goes down to the basement to pull us a pitcher to enjoy during clean up.
AND . . .
Well, all I can tell you is that there is significantly less water produced when you make one batch instead of two. For the second week in a row my basement flooded from brewing. It turns out the that frost free valve in my garage wasn't so frost free and it burst inside my basement ceiling. Every time I opened the valve to chill my wort, it was spraying all over my basement.
The silver lining - My wife issued a public, facebook apology to us because it was a burst pipe rather than our idiocy that caused the floods. The 15 hours spent cleaning the mess might be worth that alone.
Still it smelt nice after!
