Water shortage brewing.

My own water supply comes mainly from Sweetloves WTW which is fed mainly from local sources - which means Winter Hill, the one with the fire on it. The alternative is from Wayoh WTW, which is just below Wayoh Reservoir.

Clint said:

England should build more reservoirs....we have plenty of water in Wales but it gets sent elsewhere.
Thinking about it ..that Loch Ness never seems empty....

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That’s cos that Monster keeps pissing in it ! [emoji23]


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Ah! Thanks for that! You learn something new every day...it must drink a lot.

I thought mine came from the lakes (I'm on the wirral) but apparently it comes from the Dee...

Learn something new every day :-)

This is the amount of water it’s taking to cool to pitching temperature. I reckon at least 15 gallons. I need to get one more brew in before the hose pipe ban takes effect!

Switch to no-chill.
And in my experience, yes you do need to reduce your bittering hops as you'll get extra bitterness from 0 min additions.
Alternately, use recipes with no late additions. I recently did a pale ale from Ron Pattinsons vintage beer book with hop additions at 90. 60 and 30 minutes. Must say I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of hop flavour and aroma.

I did a lot of no chill but found that chilling gave me vastly superior beers. I just love those late hopped flavours. I have done a couple of Belgian style brews this summer using M47 yeast. Those beers would be great for no chill.

To get me down to about 35c takes about 80 to 100l. I reckon would be much less if i improved my chiller and used a pump as well. On the other hand i can make 25l of raw beer using 32l in total. Its no chill so thats it.
Before i used a chiller i topped up the kettle with cold water until i hit 75c, did a hopstand then no chilled.

I'm going to dilute my water to make it go further! :thumb:

dad_of_jon said:

I'm going to dilute my water to make it go further! :thumb:

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You'll end up with Greene King IPA.

If you're not already, whirlpooling with either a drill attachment (a wine degassing whip will do it), or a pump, whilst you use an immersion chiller massively reduces the time it takes (and so the amount of water used). Beats the heck out of just stirring.

AdeDunn said:

If you're not already, whirlpooling with either a drill attachment (a wine degassing whip will do it), or a pump, whilst you use an immersion chiller massively reduces the time it takes (and so the amount of water used). Beats the heck out of just stirring.

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I stir the wort with a paddle whilst cooling, remove the immersion cooler, create a whirlpool effect with the paddle, let it sit for 15 minutes to settle and then drain off into the FV from a side take-off without using a filter.

The reason I put a Protafloc into the last 10 minutes of the boil is to ensure that the debris comes out of suspension, clumps together (flocculates) and can thereby quickly fall out of suspension.

I stopped using a drill attachment because although it speeded up the cooling process and created a significant whirlpool within the boiler, it also broke up the flocculated debris; which defeated the reason for the Protafloc and made it much harder to drain off the boiler and leave the debris behind.

I only make beers from kits so don’t really understand the process of cooling water but I do a bit of distilling and the cooling water is recycled through a small pond pump into a water but. In this heat I would put a bag or two of ice into the butt. Also I have a water meter so wouldn’t want to waste it anyway.

Nobbynormal said:

I only make beers from kits so don’t really understand the process of cooling water but I do a bit of distilling and the cooling water is recycled through a small pond pump into a water but. In this heat I would put a bag or two of ice into the butt. Also I have a water meter so wouldn’t want to waste it anyway.

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Im sure by distilling you actually mean making wine or beer, as distilling spirits is illegal in the UK without a license? :thumba:

Dutto said:

I stir the wort with a paddle whilst cooling, remove the immersion cooler, create a whirlpool effect with the paddle, let it sit for 15 minutes to settle and then drain off into the FV from a side take-off without using a filter.

The reason I put a Protafloc into the last 10 minutes of the boil is to ensure that the debris comes out of suspension, clumps together (flocculates) and can thereby quickly fall out of suspension.

I stopped using a drill attachment because although it speeded up the cooling process and created a significant whirlpool within the boiler, it also broke up the flocculated debris; which defeated the reason for the Protafloc and made it much harder to drain off the boiler and leave the debris behind.

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That's where using a pump, bazooka filter, and whole hops comes in, all that debris gets sucked into the hops and held there whilst whirlpooling. I use Protafloc too, and was getting crystal clear wort transferring using this method in my old ACE, AND cooling in about 15 to 20 minutes, rather than 40 minutes.

One way to reduce mains water consumption is to use it only while the wort temperature is dropping rapidly - you are getting more "value" for it.
I brewed in a hot climate where tap water was about 30 deg C, so I would stop it running through the immersion chiller at about 40 deg C.
Then I would line up the chiller to a small pump (like a fish tank pump) in an insulated box filled with iced water. The returns from the chiller coil dumped back into the box. They were cooler than tap water.
I found that a couple of bags of ice was enough to get the wort down to below 20 deg C quite quickly. Just added enough water to cover the pump at the beginning.

If you are lucky enough to have a pond/pool you can put a submersible pump in and use it instead of tap water. I found it was usually about the same temperature as tap water. My pump is 125 watts which is plenty as long as you are not pumping too far uphill.
If you have a big fridge/kegerator you could optimise the icebath by chilling the water you add - then the ice will go further.
From what I have read, the risk of slow cooling is bacteria infection, and the lower end of the danger zone is about 27 deg C. Not sure about the upper end but it must be above 40 deg C. The ice bath makes sure the wort does not hang around in the danger zone too long.

mathorp said:

Then I would line up the chiller to a small pump (like a fish tank pump) in an insulated box filled with iced water.

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I've wondered about doing this myself as you can get a decent looking submersible pond pump for £20-30. A very large bucket of icy water should get the temperature down pretty quickly and can still use the leftovers to water the garden.

I have a Grainfather which comes with a counterflow chiller, and have used the water from that for washing up. I save all plates, cutlery etc from the day and wash them along with all my brewing equipment during cool down, and any excess I used to put in barrels and my wife would take them to the farm to water her crops (it's not a big farm). It became a pain moving ~60 litres of water to and from the car so we don't do that anymore.

The breweries in Bermondsey use their water cooling to fill up the HLT for the next brew. I'd imagine that's not just a Bermondsey thing though. I've thought about doing that but I don't brew 2 days in a row (sadly), and I don't have the space to store buckets of water.

I'm wondering if there is a way to cool with water from the waterbutt...

jceg316 said:

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I'm wondering if there is a way to cool with water from the waterbutt...

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Just plumb in a small pump to your water butt and start brewing very early in the morning.

Early morning is the time at which your water butt will be at its lowest temperature and the cooling water can be recycled back to the butt.

However, assuming that:

• 23 litres of 100*C wort are to be reduced to 22*C then it will require the removal of +/- 1,794 Kcal of energy. (i.e. a calorie = the change of 1*C to 1cc 0f water so +78 x 23,000 = 1,794,000)
• the water butt contains 200 litres (*) of water at 18*c then the 200 litres of water will be heated with +/- 1,794 Kcal of energy; which will increase the temperature of 200 litres by 8.97*C to 26.97*C. (1,795,000 ÷ 200,000 = 8.97)

The above figures are very approximate, but in this weather (at the moment it is at just under 19*C in my garden) you will need a very large water butt to get the wort down to the 22*C mark!

Hope this helps ...

... and also hope that the maths are somewhere near because I been cooling down with a couple of litres of Bitter! :thumb:

Our water butts 2x200l ran out in early June!