Hey all,
Since it takes so much water to chill a batch, which essentially just gets tossed on the lawn, I was thinking about making a more "closed loop" cooling system to chill the beer. What I'm thinking is, getting two large containers (ie. rubber trash cans) and fill up one of them with my cooling water. I would then pump from one can, through my chiller, then back into the second can. Since I only brew every 1-2 weeks, this hot water would have plenty of time to cool down to ambient temperature. Once it's cool, I can then reuse this water for the next batch, thus saving a lot of waste water.
There are some limitations, for example the volume of water required to chill a batch, and the ambient temperature (which the water would be at). This would work well in the winter here because I brew in the garage and it often hovers just above freezing in there. In the summer, I could get the bulk of my chilling done with this water (even if it's at 20-30°C), then finish it off with some cold tap/ground water.
While I might not be able to reuse 100% of this water, I think it would drastically cut down on my water usage.
I also have some concerns about this water getting "skunky" over time. Is there a way to disinfect this water for long term storage? Liquid chlorine? Some of this water may also end up as hot cleaning water after brewing, but never for consumption.
Anybody do anything similar?
Cheers
Since it takes so much water to chill a batch, which essentially just gets tossed on the lawn, I was thinking about making a more "closed loop" cooling system to chill the beer. What I'm thinking is, getting two large containers (ie. rubber trash cans) and fill up one of them with my cooling water. I would then pump from one can, through my chiller, then back into the second can. Since I only brew every 1-2 weeks, this hot water would have plenty of time to cool down to ambient temperature. Once it's cool, I can then reuse this water for the next batch, thus saving a lot of waste water.
There are some limitations, for example the volume of water required to chill a batch, and the ambient temperature (which the water would be at). This would work well in the winter here because I brew in the garage and it often hovers just above freezing in there. In the summer, I could get the bulk of my chilling done with this water (even if it's at 20-30°C), then finish it off with some cold tap/ground water.
While I might not be able to reuse 100% of this water, I think it would drastically cut down on my water usage.
I also have some concerns about this water getting "skunky" over time. Is there a way to disinfect this water for long term storage? Liquid chlorine? Some of this water may also end up as hot cleaning water after brewing, but never for consumption.
Anybody do anything similar?
Cheers