I've read everywhere that chlorine will boil off; however, the part I'm not sure about is if I need to boil all my mash water beforehand or if all the chlorine will boil off in the kettle afterwords. I'm chasing an odd off flavor that pops up in most of my brews to some degree and since my local tap water obviously has some chlorine in it I'm trying to rule this out as a possible cause.
If chlorinated water is used in brewing, the hypochlorite ion complexs with the wort to create chorophenols which will not boil out. You MUST remove chlorine and chloramine from brewing water before mashing or sparging or adding malt extract by either preboiling, activated carbon filtration, or metabisulfite addition.
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Martin Brungard, P.E. D.WRE
Carmel, IN
BJCP National
Foam Blowers of Indiana (FBI)
Brewing Water Information at: https://sites.google.com/site/brunwater/
It's quite simple to manage chlorine in brewing water. Draw a glass of the water and pour it back and forth into another glass while sniffing. If you smell chlorine then the water contains at least chlorine and possibly chloramine. Let the glass of water sit over night and repeat. If you still smell chlorine the water contains chloramine. Add 1 campden tablet per 20 gallons in this case. If you can't smell chlorine any more (but do smell sulfur dioxide) then you have successfully dealt with the chloramine.
I thought campden only took out chloramine, if it does both I'll just start using that and never worry about this again. Everything I've read from the local water department says chlorine so I think that's what I got (I live in Boulder, CO and would love to hear if anyone knows different). Thanks for the quick responses, you guys are brilliant. Planning on sending a sample off to Ward labs tomorrow so I'll be looking for your expertise again soon.
Quick chlorine question
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