I was complaining recently ( well "moaning") about the high standing charges by my water/drainage supplier, to one of my sons --- as a very small user of water since I live on my own and so on and so on..
He said to me "Hey Dad how much water do you use in your wine making efforts!" And I did a simple sort of estimate and realised that my throughput of water was possibly very high/
We, living in parts of the world where water is still generally an abundant supply ( "on tap") tend to use it as a throw away material. I am sure that some little African girl/boy/woman/man, who has to carry it a long way is much more aware of its value. I grew older in the belief that fresh, cool, drinkable water was instantly available from the tap ( faucet). If it wasn't cold then just run it off, for a few gallons ( Imp or US) until it was nice.
Anyway I have been aware for some tine about the amount of water that I use. It is mainly in washing and cleaning. It actually mounts up to a frightening volume! And that is just as a "hobbyist"!
So lets look at it:-
Cleaning a freshly emptied 25 litre ( say five gals imp) fermenter.
- 10 gals minimum of cold water-- probably 15 just to remove the debris.
- filled with hot near boiling water + detergent to clean.
- Preparation for reuse. Fill with fresh water and empty.
- Sanitize with solution of Pot meta. then rinse with a gal of water
That's 36 gallons of water purely on fermenters and does not account for water spent in washing and sanitizing utensils. Another 2 gallons to take care of diluting the must and all the other things means that it must take over 40 gals imp+ ) to produce 5 gals (Imp) of wine. I bet that the really wastage of fresh water per 5 gallons of wine is nearer
50 or 60 gallons. Which is an awful lot! I wonder what the throughput of fresh water of a modern commercial vintner amounts to?