Drain Disaster

Do commercial breweries suffer the problem of backfilling drains and floods?

We had a downpour last night and the cellar suffered from an overflowing drain and flooded the floor. I spent about an hour with my other half sluicing and mopping the floor with bleach and hot water to clean it up. We’ve not had a problem like that for about 5 years but for some reason the drain was blocked and backfilled into the cellar with water.

Thankfully it was nothing really nasty, but it was definitely drain water from the smell and not the kind of thing you want hanging around in your clothes washing / brewing area.

You can guess which of these two household  activities I was most concerned with as I rushed to check that my fermenting bin was unharmed… disregarding the expensive electrical household equipment that lay in the path of the flood.

As all of my kit and ingredients are in stacked plastic tubs and the fermenting bins and barrels / bottles are one a wooden shelving unit nothing was really touched by the drain water. Crisis averted!

The floor is concrete and we managed to get the dank smell out today by opening the cellar door to the outside and putting the tumble drier on to increase the temperature a bit.

Better keep an eye on this for the future! Only glad that the cellar is not properly tanked / decorated as this would have been a very expensive problem.

2 thoughts on “Drain Disaster

    • Author gravatar

      I?ve learn a few excellent stuff here. Certainly worth bookmarking for revisiting. I surprise how much attempt you set to create such a magnificent informative site.

    • Author gravatar

      The second thing to keep in mind is light. Keep your cellar dark! UV light interacts with hops in beer to create the dreaded light-struck flavor, otherwise known as skunked beer. Keep your beers shielded from light in any way possible, especially if they are packaged in clear or green bottles. A cheap way to prevent light-struck beer is to stick them in a sealed box or paper bag.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *