Kitchen brewers, how do ya fill everything up??

Just wondering how everyone has their setups to get enough water for boiling and all. At the moment I'm using the sprayer on my sink since my sink isnt big enough to fill my bucket in using the faucet. So where do you fill up? What do you use to measure with?

I have a smallish kitchen sink. My 5 gallon Stainless Steel pots fit in it for filling though.

I don't like lifting full 5 gallon pots with near boiling water in them though so I use a plastic 2 quart measuring cup to get mash and sparge water into it.

I'm comfortable pouring the wort back and forth from boil pot to fermenter at about a foot and a half from the floor. I'm pretty sure I'm getting decent aeration this way.

I use bottled water. I just pick up 5 one gallon jugs of spring water. No measuring, and no worries about the water im using.

I saved a couple of 1 gallon jug containers. I like my water so I fill them with the filtered water from the fridge which takes forever, I'd like to get an under sink filter installed.

I use half gallon plastic pitchers. Takes a few minutes to draw enough water.

Bottled water here. Gallon jugs.

I just measure with a one quart glass measuring cup for all my mash water. I have to heat up my sparge water in multiple pots, but I've memorized how much to fill a couple of my pots for a certain amount of water, so no measuring there.

Brasco20 said:

I use bottled water. I just pick up 5 one gallon jugs of spring water. No measuring, and no worries about the water im using.

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Do you account for evaporation during the boil? I lose about a gallon of water in a one hour boil.

bottled water

I replaced my faucet aerator with an adapter that I can slide a 1/2" ID silicone hose onto. It works great for filling up my kettle and also for cleaning out equipment.

dandw12786 said:

Just wondering how everyone has their setups to get enough water for boiling and all. At the moment I'm using the sprayer on my sink since my sink isnt big enough to fill my bucket in using the faucet. So where do you fill up? What do you use to measure with?

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Is it that the pot won't fit in the sink, or that the faucet won't swing over the pot once it's in the sink? If it's the latter, you could fairly easily put in a taller faucet.

Dynachrome said:

Is it that the pot won't fit in the sink, or that the faucet won't swing over the pot once it's in the sink? If it's the latter, you could fairly easily put in a taller faucet.

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Faucet won't swing over. New faucet would be a great option, but tough to get my wife to approve of something that we don't need just so I can brew a bit easier.

5 gallon pot in the sink to collect filtered water, hose hooked up to sink for cleaning and sanitizing.

So far I use bottled water for all of my mash/brewing water. I use tap water for sanitizing and cleaning chores. When I fill my carboys for cleaning I use the racking cane tube and tubing from my auto syphon...this helps ensure the inside of the autosyphon is clean as well after running >5 gallons of hot water through it. I just stick the end of the clear rubber hose into the end of the fawcet, it leaks a little but not bad. I use the autosyphon to move star san between vessels and my cooled wort to my primary so the act of transfering star san with it sanitizes it for handling the wort.

I have a hand held shower massage thing as a shower head. So I unscrew it and use the hose to fill buckets and clean carboys. Works great.

I used my filtered shower head on my first batch, but after receiving my most recent water bill, I think I'm switching to buying gallons of water from the store.

dandw12786 said:

Faucet won't swing over. New faucet would be a great option, but tough to get my wife to approve of something that we don't need just so I can brew a bit easier.

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Ha ha, same prob here. Faucet was too low to swing over my kettle and didn't even want to try to use my brewing woes to justify to my wife that we "need" a new kitchen faucet. Luckily ours was pretty old and ugly, so that was enough for her to go along with me installing a new, fancy, shiny one that just happens to be tall enough to swing over my kettle. Before that I used 1 gal, 1/2 gal milk jugs and a 4cup/1qt measuring cup to measure out my water.

Good luck finding something that works for you.

On brew day I unscrew my faucet aerator and replace it with a hose adapter and a Y. One leg of the Y is for use in the sink, to the other leg I can attach a short RV water hose for filling buckets, or a length of washing machine hose for my immersion chiller.

dandw12786 said:

Just wondering how everyone has their setups to get enough water for boiling and all. At the moment I'm using the sprayer on my sink since my sink isnt big enough to fill my bucket in using the faucet. So where do you fill up? What do you use to measure with?

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I pay the 5ish dollars for 6 gallons of spring water. Its premeasured and easy to get into the pot. Plus I dont worry about the water having anything in it.

I go back and forth between bottled water and my tap water. (It's filtered and tasty) My sink isn't near big enough to hold my brewing pots. I have a 1 gallon measuring cup made by Pyrex. and a couple 4qt ones.
Benefits of having pastry equipment around the house.

4 foot hose (the water here is fine, lucky) and a few different spoons with half gallon graduations on them (for my current pot. change your pot, change your spoons. lol)

I have a few large stainless steel mixing bowls with measurements on the inside. The largest bowl is one gallon, I just refill it in the kitchen sink and dump into the stock pot.

Milk jugs and 2L soda bottles. Approximate volumes only, of course, heh.

I have a kitchen sink to hose adapter I screw into place on the sink then from there I use a 6 foot trailer hose I got from home depot.

use an empty water gallon jug to measure out my water

dandw12786 said:

Just wondering how everyone has their setups to get enough water for boiling and all. At the moment I'm using the sprayer on my sink since my sink isnt big enough to fill my bucket in using the faucet. So where do you fill up? What do you use to measure with?

Click to expand...

I just drop the supply line off of my immersion chiller and use it like a mini garden hose. I have a dipstick (really my long heatproof spoon) which has notches every 1 G (DIY).

Crank up the water until it hits the appropriate 'notch' then shut it off. Bonus to this is that I can fill them whil they are on the stove.

Problem with your sprayer is that it has an aerator and is slows the flow rate to about 50%. I put a garden hose quick disconnect on the sink to connect my IC to it. Easy on, easy off--no aerator.

Am I the only one that fills up the pot in the bathtub?

I brew with 50% RO and 50% tap water, I keep the brew water in 5 gallon water jugs. I have the water jugs marked in .5 gallon increments so I can easily add the correct amount of water for mashout, sparge, strike whatever. since RO water locally is 25 cents per gallon, I fill up to what I need in the jugs, then top up with tap water at home. So for 10 gallons I fill the 2 jugs up to 2.5 gallons each at the water store.

my faucet has the sprayer thing built into it, so I just pull out the sprayer and fill the water jugs up to the correct final amount.

I throw an elastic on the trigger of the sprayer in the sink and toss it into the pot. Turn on the water and let it fill.

I have a food service 1 gallon pitcher, with markings for ounces, pints, quarts, cups, etc.

Very handy size, and accurate markings to ensure my mash volumes are on target.