Water consumption

[Craig Dhonau]

How much water would you estimate, goes "down the drain" in your brewery?

I've seen the JVNW website with the 6-8 bbl's water required/bbl of beer produced, was wondering if anyone would share their practical experience. I'm trying to figure out the feasibility/sizing of a commercial septic system that would handle a 7-10 bbl system brewing a couple of times/week.

Any insight would be appreciated!

Craig.

[Ray Hodge]

I estimate about 5 bbls water per bbl, I am very conservative and in a 10 bbl 2X/week cycle. I use tight(short and powerful) rinses, and keep them discreet(full drain out between rinses), and use 4 rinses after caustic. I will run the acid wash from tank to tank, as well as the sani, thus using less. A caustic reserve tank helps a lot by re-using your caustic. Hope this helps.

[Craig Dhonau]

Ray,

Thanks for the input, unfortunately, I don't think the property in question will work out. The State of Texas says I would need a public water supply well and the septic engineer didn't paint a very pretty picture ($$$). I think I may have found a warehouse space that will work; no zoning with city water and sewage. Your info is helpful to work the numbers at this location.

Craig.

[vincent]

more accurate would be 9 bbls h2o for every bbl bright beer...this can be even more if you are using water for wort cooling, do you scavenge this? Best way to estimate is measure how many gallons your water pressure dispenses in a minute, then with time measure your rinsing cycles and so forth...water is the most important resource and yet often most overlooked

[Moonlight]

It is very feasable to waste two or less gallons per gallon on beer sold. Yes, and it does require persistent improvement to the design of your brewery and intelligence and dedication by the brewers.

As clean water is growing scarcer, and wastewater costs are spiraling out of control, this is a topic that is increasingly critical.

Just as you conserve gasoline or energy when price goes up, the same mindset must be used towards water.

[triple]

How much water would you estimate, goes "down the drain" in your brewery?

I've seen the JVNW website with the 6-8 bbl's water required/bbl of beer produced, was wondering if anyone would share their practical experience. I'm trying to figure out the feasibility/sizing of a commercial septic system that would handle a 7-10 bbl system brewing a couple of times/week.

Any insight would be appreciated!

Craig.

During the bottle sanatizinging process is another huge water loss. We recently built a capture and recycle recovery system that allows us to recycle 90% of our bottle sanatizing water. Prior, we used to let it run down the drain over 2 shifts. We change the 150 gallon tank out every other day.

[WaterEng]

Wastewater production is on the order of 4 to 8 times the volume of beer produced for typical craft breweries. Homebrewing is on the order of 15 times production. Some of my very active and efficient clients have reduced their wastewater production (the amount actually going into the sewer offsite) to nearly 2.5 times production. They are doing a lot of recycling and reuse to achieve that rate. Without the recycling and reuse, it would be more like 4.

[Rambling1]

Has anyone done an environmental audit for a brewpub or micro that they would be willing to share? I'm building now and the amount of water I use is a major concern. It's not a regulatory concern, I'd just like to be as efficient and as environmentally sound as I can.

Thanks,
John

[Fennellys]

http://www.energystar.gov/ia/busines...LBNL-50934.pdf

Here is a paper that someone else pointed me to. I have not read it yet so I cannot speak for any of the info in it.

[Gael]

We haven't done any hard measurements, but with major attention to water re-use we are pretty sure we've got our water use down to 2.5:1. Water used for wort cooling is held and re-used for all our cleaning and sanitizing needs, plus we installed a heat-on-demand system that uses only this water source for mash water. Hand washing, re-using both cleaners and sanitizers, timing tank cleaning so that you can do this... and NOT bottling. Single biggest waste of water in a brewery, as far as I can tell.

The other issue is how well any wastewater system will cope with your chemicals. Digesters of any sort will be very unhappy with both caustic and yeast. Both need to be treated before they hit the drain. Yeast can easily be killed by blending with sanitizer (which is easy, since you've just used it to clean the finishing tank into which you're transferring), and caustic will have to be pH balanced. A pre-digester/pre-septic holding tank will allow you to get your wastewater pH balanced before it goes into the actual digester. You can also use alternative chemicals like PWB from Five-Star which is actually helpful to digesters, and use Peroxyacetic Acid as a sanitizer.

Unfortunately, there are very few city engineers out there who will understand this stuff, you need to get it all drawn up by an engineer who does get it in order to impress them.

[Fullcourt]

I apologize to whoever put this together. I copied it, but don't have the original author. Looks like 33 BBLs of water for 10 BBLs of beer. Notice 2.5 BBLs into spent grain.


Brewery Space Requirements:
Average production brewery with bottling=1.25-1.75 SF/BBL/Year
Minimum production brewery start-up size requirements: 5,000 square feet industrial space with 20' ceilings, loading dock, good truck access, 3 phase power, city gas main
Average pub brewery plant with in-house sales only=.06-1.0 SF/BBL/Year (not including restaurant)
Minimum brewpub size requirements: 3,000 square feet in retail area with ample parking and/or high foot traffic
Energy Use:
Brewpubs:
Electrical: 10-15 KWH/BBL
Chiller: 8-20 BTU /BBL
Natural gas: 1.3 therms/BBL
Ingredients (averages for all malt beers):
Water usage: 3.0-7.0 BBL per BBL of beer sold
Malt: 45-60 #/BBL
Hops: 0.5-0.8 #/BBL
Water Usage Breakdown for Pub Breweries:
Usage & output per 10 BBL, average (pub brewery)
10 BBL in product
12 BBL Cooling-reclaimed
1 BBL Evaporated
2.5 BBL With spent grain
8.5 BBL To sewer
33 bbl TOTAL
Effluent (Average for Pub Breweries):
BOD mg/L 600-1200
COD mg/L 800-1600
TSS mg/L 250-500
pH 5.5-6.5