Water Used In Brewing

[Shed101]

We aren't taking into account the amount of water used to create the petrol that these guys use to send their product out to distributors then to bottle shops then for the peoples cars to drive to said bottle shop to buy the beer. Then water used to make the glass (which most of the time should be recycled anyway) to sell said beer, whereas brewing at home if you are using kegs and reusing Tallies over and over again you're far ahead. If looking at it from a cradle to grave scenario, home brewing would be more sustainable than macro.

Well I could arrange a full lifecycle analysis using simapro software, taking into account every little element if you like ... but it ain't cheap :lol:

New Belgian brewery did a decent enough carbon footprint that makes for a good read (if you're that way inclined)

I know of a carbon study comparing synthetic with real cork in Aussie wines ... the conclusion was that the customer that drives 5km to pick up a single bottle of wine does far more damage than shipping corks from all over the world, then shipping them back to Europe in the top of a bottle.

 

[outbreak]

Well I could arrange a full lifecycle analysis using simapro software, taking into account every little element if you like ... but it ain't cheap :lol:

New Belgian brewery did a decent enough carbon footprint that makes for a good read (if you're that way inclined)

I know of a carbon study comparing synthetic with real cork in Aussie wines ... the conclusion was that the customer that drives 5km to pick up a single bottle of wine does far more damage than shipping corks from all over the world, then shipping them back to Europe in the top of a bottle.

Sorry to go OT but how much would it cost to do an analysis of a typical house build from start to finish??

 

[fasty73]

What does it matter? ALL the dams are overflowing at the moment, well in Qld. anyway.

 

[hoohaaman]

What does it matter? ALL the dams are overflowing at the moment, well in Qld. anyway.

Shouldn't you be busy cleaning and sanitizing,maybe some reading of a book by John Palmer

 

[fasty73]

I am sanitising as we speak, I keep going to the laundry sink and back to here

 

[outbreak]

You should really be reading said book.....

 

[fasty73]

Yes, I will get to that tomorrow. Good advice I am sure.

 

[Hatchy]

The key to cutting down on water use is re-using as much as possible. If you use biodegradeable products like percarb and star san then that can be used to water veges, herbs and hops or in cleaning inside the house.

Thus my 5L per litre of beer will be 5L used to water the potatoes or sage or hops, clean the bath, clean fermenter, kettle and accessories and make a litre of beer. I only soak if I'm not cleaning straight away.

Haven't calculated the full amount but water use in our house is reasonably consistent with previous years and usually at or below recommended amounts for numbers of people per household. Almost all the water used to water herbs etc comes from my brewing -it's only the absolute height of summer when I use water from anywhere else.

Chlorine sanitiser is not used on the garden but I use less than a litre per brew and re-use it. I also re-use sodium met solution (used mainly to remove chlorine odour/residue).

Once again, Manticle with the sensible approach. When I 1st started brewing I hated the amount of water I was using until I started thinking about the amount of water coopers use for the beer I drank before I started brewing. I reuse my sod perc solution until it stops cleaning, I really need a pH meter so I know if my starsan solution is still OK of not, I'm not 100% comfortable with "if it's not cloudy it's fine" but for the moment I'm happy to reuse unclouded starsan. Yeast cakes & krausen lines get a squirt with the hose to get rid of the majority of the filth, then a scrub with a sponge & another squirt to rinse. Strike & sparge water get used to give my liver some exercise & then get used to water the lemon tree. I'd like to think that I'm around 2-3L water for every litre of beer but I'm probably way off. I think someone mentioned earlier in this thread that the fact that we reuse bottles & cornies for home brew has to put us way in front of commercial breweries for environmental impact. From my (possibly limited) understanding, commercial breweries aren't allowed to reuse their own bottles, they have to send them off for recycling & then buy new bottles.

 

[dr K]

New Belgium really are serious about their product and their footprnt. All employees have a company bike and are expected to ride to work, they utilise the heat from their bolier to heat the hot liquor, pretty much nothing that could be wasted is. I had a personal tour through there on my last visit (even into the labs and the fondres sampling direct from the oak ..wow!, but i can do these things)
My best scenario is this:
If you utilise your cleaning water and take some care you can use a lot of of water, I do, but re-use most of it .My fermentors are stainless steel (modified 22 litre kegs) and the one lot of caustic 5% lasts for ages, I just transfer and soak a few days with a bit of scrubbing, I rinse by filling the now empty keg to brim and holding whilst the next keg is soaking then I re-use again in a sort of solera system, after a while the caustic gets crappy so I neutralise it with vinegar and toss it on the mulching spent grains along with the multi rinse water... the final rinse for the keg or fermentor which comes from the cooling water after boiling ends up on the vege garden via an old fermentor attached to a drip system, as does most of my waste water..
if I did everything fresh and once off for claeaning alone I would use about 7.5 litres of water per litre, for mashing /boiling about 2 and for cooling a further 2.5 so thats a realistic 12l of water per litre of beer, or less than a cent.
Unless my cooling water too is is recycled even in never emptied solera I use about 5l per litre after I get the system going. In reality I use by my estimate about 8 litres of water for every litre of beer but my vegies use a remarkably small amount of water....

 

[Shed101]

Sorry to go OT but how much would it cost to do an analysis of a typical house build from start to finish??

You couldn't really do an LCA for a house - that would probably send someone completely mad.
It would involve picking apart every single thing inside the building and working out what energy, chemicals, etc, etc, are used, where they came from, what in turn they were made from ...

It works best for materials and comparisons of materials ... so, wooden floor versus concrete slab. That kind of stuff. Often common sense gives you the right answer, but not always, because until you do all the calc's you don't find out how much impact each element has.

Cost depends on how far you go. Probably no change from $10k.

 

[Shed101]

I'm lucky (?) enough to be entirely reliant on rainwater tanks. That's how you learn to use water wisely.

This week I will be using 900 litres to wash my fermenter

 

[fasty73]

I'm lucky (?) enough to be entirely reliant on rainwater tanks. That's how you learn to use water wisely.

This week I will be using 900 litres to wash my fermenter

ROFLMAO

 

[Hatchy]

I'm lucky (?) enough to be entirely reliant on rainwater tanks. That's how you learn to use water wisely.

This week I will be using 900 litres to wash my fermenter

Is that the 900L that's going to overflow from the tanks this week?

 

[Shed101]

Is that the 900L that's going to overflow from the tanks this week?

Pretty much. We're approaching 3 x av. monthly rainfall already this month (and we're only half way through October!),

There are cats and dogs bouncing off the roof right now ... cats heads blocking the bloody gutters again!

 

[Hatchy]

Pretty much. We're approaching 3 x av. monthly rainfall already this month (and we're only half way through October!),

There are cats and dogs bouncing off the roof right now ... cats heads blocking the bloody gutters again!

Those cats may also get caught in yr airlock. Be careful.