Water use

Not wishing to state the obvious.. But here goes... The flow should be continually turned down until the exit water is warm. Flat out is only needed for the first minute or so.

No Chill is the answer

No water meter is the answer

A conscience maybe?

Oh, if you fail to rinse your percarbonate based cleaner/sanitizer properly then your guaranteed to get oxidation

jof said:

Oh, if you fail to rinse your percarbonate based cleaner/sanitizer properly then your guaranteed to get oxidation

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I'd dispute that! If using it "no-rinse" there shouldn't be enough "active" percarbonate left to give off any significant oxygen. BUT ... I wouldn't use it "no-rinse" anyway; sodium carbonate (the breakdown product) doesn't give off oxygen, but stinks of wet laundry! And is very alkaline. I wouldn't buy such pokey quantities of percarbonate either: Even a 25kg sack is cheap and easily available and clearly illustrates the outrageous markup on those little packs (Warning: If you can't store it away from damp, the sack will give off a lot of oxygen ... not in itself hazardous, but it will make any nearby fire burn more fiercely).

Percarbonate, in solution, breaks down to create hydrogen peroxide, a very active cleaner/sanitiser (beats StarSan, and even thin bleach), which itself breaks down to oxygen and water.

The Baron said:

No Chill is the answer

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Not 'arf! I'm busy at this very moment (err, I'm having a break!) ordering bits so I can fill two 22L "No-Chill Cubes" from a 44L batch in the boiler ... without the risk of overflowing a cube (well, I do get distracted!). And ... without risking me back moving full 20L Plus steel fermenters about the place (the previous solution pumped cooled wort through ridiculously long pipes ... some over-head!).

Filling them not only removes the waste of water used for cooling but marks the end of "Brewday". All the measuring OG, having the yeast ready, making sure the fermenter is properly sanitised, aerating, etc. is put off until another day. Suits me fine. This is using the "aseptic" manner of "no-chill", where the unfermented wort can stay safe in the container for ... well, I don't know how long, but some are claiming years.

I've got to incorporate the new "hop-back" into the "no-chill cube" filling too ... replaces the late/steep/whirlpool hops that many people are finding is an obstacle to "no-chill".

peebee said:

I'd dispute that! If using it "no-rinse" there shouldn't be enough "active" percarbonate left to give off any significant oxygen.

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Wrong.
A few drops left in a demijohn was sufficient to change the colour of my cider on contact.
I kept going (out of interest) to fill the demijohn rather than just throw away 1/2 a pint & start again & the darkening of colour was substantial.
Like o level chemistry titration.

See from post #5

@jof: But was that "oxidation" or a reaction coming into contact with ph10+ Sodium Carbonate solution?

Even if badly drained, after a few hours Percarbonate solution will not be creating oxygen any longer. But I wouldn't want to drink anything polluted with the resulting Sodium Carbonate (Washing Soda).

Whatever the cause, Sodium Percarbonate is not a no-rinse cleaner for brewing. I think we can both agree on that.

peebee said:

Not 'arf! I'm busy at this very moment

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Busy making it hard.
Overnight chill = Just pop the lid on and run away.

peebee said:

Whatever the cause, Sodium Percarbonate is not a no-rinse cleaner for brewing. I think we can both agree on that.

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Would be better

Agentgonzo said:

I use a CFC. A couple of years ago I did an outdoor brew and collected the cooling water in a 10L watering can. I think I filled it 12 times, so 120L cooling water for a 23L batch. That was in summer. In winter the tap water is colder so I would guess I use more like 100L. I save the first bit of the water on my sparge kettle for cleaning too.

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I have found the same but, in the last hosepipe ban 2 summers ago, I switched to no-chill and have noticed no difference to the beer. I just need to reduce my electricity usage now. A brew day is very obvious on the smart meter

Hi rank_frank.
A couple of things that will help.
1. draw your water from the tap and leave in buckets in a warm room overnight if you have one that should raise the temp upto 10c then put in your brewing apparatus just before brewing so less heating up same with grain weigh out and leave in a warm room overnight to aid minimising temp drop when doughing in.
2. is your brew equipment insulated? as that will help.
3. do a 30 minute boil on most beers except for bitters/ales then do a 45min boil.
4 keep the lid on whilst getting upto mash temp and boil temp but be careful of boil overs when going up to the boil.
None of these are dramatic but will all help

I generally estimate that a 25L beer will use around 125L of water altogether. The estimates of water usage for commercial breweries are typically 5-6 times the actual water usage to volume of beer produced.
In the UK we use drinking water for washing, including washing cars, and, in our version of reality, to cool down wort for convenience. The typical amount of drinking water used by a person in the UK is 140L. How much of that is actually drunk?
The "aim" is to reduce this to 110L over the next 25 years, but achieving this seems like a fantasy.

Anyone who has ever had a caravan probably gets though 40-50 litres per day. So that's 8-10 days per brew chill.

I heard somewhere that it's less water to bath than shower? Really?

Moe said:

Even so I was surprised at the figure: somewhere between 12-16l of water used per litre of beer.

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Blimey that around 700 pints of beer in old money.

With no chill, does everyone use cubes or do people just dump the hot wort into a fermentation bucket and put the lid on?

OliH said:

With no chill, does everyone use cubes or do people just dump the hot wort into a fermentation bucket and put the lid on?

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I just run it out into fermenting bucket. Stick lid on (no liquid in airlock)
Next morning, remove lid, check OG, sprinkle yeast, lid back on & some liquid in airlock.

No need for anything complicated.
No need for cubes - I thought they were only for storing longer term until you had a free FV, but most of us never brew at that rate/volume.
No need to exclude oxygen, as I'm following traditional styles without kilos of dry hops.

I did my first no chill because my hosepipe froze last year.

I transferred it into my fermenter and it melted the o rings around the pick up tube so I wouldn’t put hot wort straight into a fermentor again.

The second time I used a cube from the malt miller. Wort went in hot no problem, but it made the cube quite flexible, so I daren’t pick it up, so I left it where it was until the next morning.

I let the wort cool to 80c(lid on towel over the top to stop any nasties) before adding to a FV as they are HDPE and I prefer not to risk melting or dragging out any plasticisers etc used in manufacture

400 litres of water on my meter is about £1.20 of charges.

You can drastically improve chilling performance if you stand there and jiggle the immersion chiller while it's chilling.