Part 1: Water
The brewing process uses a large amount of water, and in some places in the United States, there are water restrictions. The best thing you can do is reuse and recycle your water.
Of course, this cannot be done with the water that will become the wort, but in a sense you will also recycle it at some point. You can accurately measure the water for grinding and spraying, and any remaining water can be used for cooling or sanitation.
Typically, the cooling process uses the most water.
Cooling boiling hot wort in a very short time requires a lot of something cold. Usually ice water is used for this, perhaps in a sink or bathtub.
But what happens to the water once it is heated and no longer cools the wort? It goes down the drain!
I must say that this model does not reach the status of “green”. If you change your settings slightly, you can get closer to that greener goal.
In this model, I currently recycle all the cooling water and effectively chill the wort in a much faster time frame. As cheap as the supplies are, you may already have everything you need to adapt this greener brewing method.
it pays to relax
When you take the kettle off the burner, the wort temperatures are over 200F. I use a 3/8″ copper tube immersion cooler. I picked up the tubing (already coiled) at the home improvement center for about $40.
I carefully bent the ends, so as not to twist the tube, to the configuration I wanted. I also bought some tubes that will fit over the copper and some hose clamps to secure them.
The only thing the wort will touch is the copper, so contamination is not a problem, unless you have a leak and cooling water is getting into the wort. Copper should be cleaned before first use to remove any grease or dirt that may be present.
You definitely don’t want that in your beer!
An acidic sanitizer works pretty well for this, and you’ll know it’s clean because you can visually see that the copper is shiny. After the first cleaning, it is only necessary to rinse. The wort will clean it with each use, but it will only come in contact with the wort, so don’t worry about contamination.
I found some food grade 10gal and 20gal containers from a vitamin manufacturer in my local area. I use the 10 gal for sanitizer and the 20 gal for the cooling process.
I found a fish tank (submersible) pump on eBay for less than $10. This is rated at 5 gal per minute. And lastly, I use my empty Cornelius barrels to store water.
Cheesy kegs take up much less space in the keg cooler than 5 gallon buckets. But the buckets can be stacked, it’s just that the footprint and volume are much larger. Currently my keg cooler holds 5 Cornelius kegs, and I could squeeze out a sixth.
I also made, but can be purchased, a quick change setup for the immersion wort chiller. You want to be able to quickly, and without the chance of contamination, move the boiling pot and cooler from the garden hose to the pump piping.
The process:
The day I make the yeast starter, I also put (2) 5 gallon Cornelius barrels filled with water in the barrel cooler to chill to around 45F. This is usually 1 or 2 days before the preparation day. The kegs might be cool enough in 10 to 12 hours, but that usually requires an adjustment to the temperature control.
After the boil, I connect the immersion wort chiller to a garden hose and run water through the chiller, collecting it for future use. If you need hot water, this is a good time to pick it up.
It’s hot tap water, heated by boiled wort! This water is good for cleaning a carafe or other brewing equipment, or simply saved for future use. The water used to clean the brewing equipment can be used in the garden for compost.
Once the wort has cooled to a level where the steam has stopped rising, usually 15 minutes or less, I move the boil pot and chiller to the chill setting (the cheesy cold kegs and the pump ).
This is where the quick disconnect setting comes into play. In my model I use the garden hose to chill the wort and the pump to over chill it.
After switching the boiling pot and chiller to the pump, I pump water from the Cornelius kegs through the chiller to the 20 gallon container. After emptying the two 5 gallon Cornelius kegs, I put the pump in the 20 gallon container and just recycle the water through the cooler.
When both barrels have been emptied, the average temperature of the collected water is still quite low. By recycling it back through the chiller, the 5 gallons of wort will quickly reach the same temperature level as the chilled water.
So the time required to chill the wort, to less than 80F, is 30 minutes. You can effectively chill wort at high temperatures with this model. The 30 minute time limit is simply the range in which cool fog and head retention issues exist.
The wort does not have to be aerated and fermented with yeast within this time frame, but the sooner the wort can contain the less chance of contamination.
In this part of organic brewing, you have learned how to recycle and reuse water to cool boiling wort and reduce water consumption.
Using the hot water for other things, like cleaning and soaking brewing equipment, uses energy transfer as a product of the cooling process.
By using the remaining cold water left over after the cooling process (usually stays in the 50F – 60F range) to fill spare Cornelius kegs and put them back in the keg cooler to cool again, energy is reduced. needed to cool the water from a warmer temperature. .
Let things cool overnight before putting them in the fridge to chill. Initially heating water during the day, in the sun, will require less energy to bring it to the required temperature.
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