SUSTAINABILITY / RE-PURPOSING
If you're making your own beer, the ability to re-purpose supplies and materials may also be important to you. Sustainability has been a hot topic over the past few years and hopefully that trend will continue. Over the course of brewing a 5 gal. batch of beer, anywhere from 15-30 gallons of water may be used for sanitizing, mashing, boiling, cooling, etc... For those all grain brewers there can be 8-15 lbs of grains that can be reused for something good. Below are just a couple ideas for utilizing materials more than once.
WATER
It is so easy to forget how much water we use in a day. For all grain brewing using 8-9 gallons for the mash is not uncommon. Factor in 5-10 for cooling the wort, 5 for sterilization, up to 5 for other cleaning and washing, and there can be quite a bit of waste.
The following are just some ideas of what to do with all that extra water. What ideas do you have? Send us your alternative water uses!
- Fill the laundry machine for a few loads
- Refill the back of the toilet after a flush
- Water plants/garden - inside and outside
- Play with / Wash the dog (it's not wasting it if he gets clean and/or tired out!)
- I usually keep my Starsan solution in a bucket for a week or two and will soak new bottles to get the labels off after brewing a batch. The solution should stay potent for a couple weeks so I'll use the same mix for my initial brew day and also for transferring to the secondary.
SPENT GRAINS
DOG TREATS
My dog loves them! Although, he also eats deer poop.... but that's another issue. Making dog treats from your spent grains is a great way to utilize and re-purpose supplies. The recipe is easy and you can make way more that you need from just 1 batch of beer. Click HERE for the recipe.
COMPOST
Spent grains are great for compost piles or even just to mix into a garden or potted plants. **WARNING** I have noticed that if I have made the dog treats before and also mix the spent grains into potted plants, the dog becomes very interested in said plant. It's great for the plants, not good for the carpet, but it's good for the plants....
My dog loves them! Although, he also eats deer poop.... but that's another issue. Making dog treats from your spent grains is a great way to utilize and re-purpose supplies. The recipe is easy and you can make way more that you need from just 1 batch of beer. Click HERE for the recipe.
COMPOST
Spent grains are great for compost piles or even just to mix into a garden or potted plants. **WARNING** I have noticed that if I have made the dog treats before and also mix the spent grains into potted plants, the dog becomes very interested in said plant. It's great for the plants, not good for the carpet, but it's good for the plants....