I really try to minimize the amount of water I use to brew, and when possible, I try to find at least one other purpose for the water I do need for cleaning, rinsing, etc. A lot of it goes to the lawn and house plants. Today it went to the potatoes and caused this brew session’s first brew-day disaster.
Ruby and I planted some potatoes in a garbage can on the back upstairs balcony. I drilled holes in the bottom of the garbage can so it would drain.
By the way, I usually brew on the back patio, under this balcony.
I was getting hot water from the garage for the wash bin. I started filling a bucket and ran the water until it just began to get hot, about a gallon and a half. Ruby and I have plants on the front balcony too; we grow strawberries, tomatoes, pineapples, and kale. We also have a milk weed for the Monarchs and some citronella for the mosquitoes. I split about half the bucket between these guys.
Then I watered the potatoes. On the back balcony. Over the patio. Where I was set up to brew.
Feeling good about finding a use for that gallon and half of water, I went back to the garage to fill my bucket with hot soapy water. Then I went outside to the patio. All of my clean gear was in a tub directly under the shower of dirty potato water.
Fortunately, the Foundry–which I was able to fix thanks to an email from Anvil–was off to the side enough to miss the main flow of potato water and only got a little splatter on the side.
I lost an hour to moving the potato planter to the other side of the balcony where it could be free to drip and to re-washing all of the gear. But, again, it all happened early enough that none of the ingredients were affected and I was still, eventuality, able to brew.
What was wrong with the Foundry? Doug, from Anvil Brewing Customer Service, let me know that some of the fans were installed too tightly. I flipped the vessel over and took the base off, then using a crescent wrench and a screwdriver I loosened the mounting screws a half turn. It fixed the problem.
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