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phished880

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As a recent AG and full boil convert I'm looking for suggestions on how to proceed.

First off, I'm a city brewer and only have a small parking spot to boil in. Secondly, how do other handle the "waste" water from your chiller in winter conditions.

I was thinking about just waiting for some temps in the 40's and just giving it a healthy dose of ice melt.

What are your thoughts of suggestions?
 
Hey Phished,
I will offer this. I bought a small pond pump from amazon for like $17.00. I will run some hose from the pump to my chiller and a line from the chiller back to a rubbermaid container filled with ice water. I have yet to do a cool down this way but if you have power it will contain all the water so at the end you can responsible dump it down a sewer drain and not leave it all over the parking lot to ice over. For the cost of a rubbermaid container and the pump your looking at 20 bucks to contain the water and feel good about not dumping a lot of water down the drain.
Hope this helps.
 
I mash inside and boil outside. After the boil, I bring the pot inside to my kitchen and hook up the chiller to the kitchen sink. Water goes down the drain. no muss, no fuss.
 
I like the pump idea, especially in the winter when you can keep adding snow to it to keep it cold.

I don't turn the water up more than it takes to push through the chiller and then rotate buckets to dump it in the spot of my yard where it doesn't affect anything.
 
One lesson I learned the hard way about brewing when its colder than a witches tit outside is to somehow keep your propane tank warmed. I brewed a double batch of a pale ale that never got to a full rolling boil due to what I later realized was my propane tank freezing up. Because of this, the beer has a slight corn aftertaste (I'm assuming from not fully boiling off the DMS). My next batch I brewed was a DIPA and I put my tank in a bucket of warm water and had zero issues of ripping off a solid rolling boil. I broke my own rules and even after 1 week, it tastes phenomenal, I can't wait for the full 4 weeks of primary and dry hopping so I can enjoy this one.
 
TheBrewinator said:
One lesson I learned the hard way about brewing when its colder than a witches tit outside is to somehow keep your propane tank warmed. I brewed a double batch of a pale ale that never got to a full rolling boil due to what I later realized was my propane tank freezing up. Because of this, the beer has a slight corn aftertaste (I'm assuming from not fully boiling off the DMS). My next batch I brewed was a DIPA and I put my tank in a bucket of warm water and had zero issues of ripping off a solid rolling boil. I broke my own rules and even after 1 week, it tastes phenomenal, I can't wait for the full 4 weeks of primary and dry hopping so I can enjoy this one.
Click to expand...

No kidding. Was it the propane itself or was it the valve/hose that was freezing up. I only ask because I will grill all winter long outdoors and I can't say I've ever run into this. I don't have issues with brewing because I do it in the garage, which typically doesn't ever get much below freezing.
 
Pretty sure it was the tank itself because that was the only thing in the warm water and it was actually colder the day I made the DIPA. Id guess that you don't see it with grilling because the rate of gas coming out of the tank is probably much lower for a grill than a wide open turkey fryer burner.
 
Brewed my first AG this past Sunday. Mashed inside, boiled outside @ 25* but sunny and not too breezy. Let wort cool for 10 minutes then carried back into house to chill with IC in kitchen sink. Worked out well. I wasn't going to start getting hoses out since outside faucet was frozen and I didn't want to deal with water outside anyway.
 

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