Removing Chlorine

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Hatesfury

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I've finally gotten myself a kit, and i'm about to endeavor to brew my first batch, and having town water, i'm going to have to get the chlorine out of the water. The 2 methods i've read up on for this are boiling (heard 15 to 45 minutes) or using campden tablets (which to my understand reacts with the chlorine and allows it to off-gas overnight).

So my question is, does any have experience using both methods, and have comments on effects of them, or advice on which method is preferred?

Thanks in advance.
(i did read up on the FAQ's, sorry if i missed this somewhere)
 
unless you have super chlorinated water you should be fine. I used to pre boil all of my water chill it then brew. I stopped that early on. the chlorine in your public water will boil off in the boil... unless it's over the top just use tap and you'll be fine.
 
...the chlorine in your public water will boil off in the boil...
Are you referring to the wort boil? Someone said in another thread that chlorine would react undesirably in mash and sparge so needed to be removed before those steps. Is that being overly cautious if chlorine is below the taste threshold?
 
I've gone to just public water in all steps... no pre boil and have produced fine beers. even after going to all grain full mash draining 6.5 gallons for a 5.5 gallon batch 5.25 to keg. unless you taste heavy chlorine off your tap you'll be fine. extra step you don't need. Now some areas do have heavy chlorine content. let your nose be the guide. I have had good water for brewing hard and soft in different areas of the east coast... but ever heavy chlorine. and i was close to Philly at one point of brewing... probably the highest chlorine count I've experinced.
 
All i've heard in regard to chlorine is with it leaving a terrible taste in the beer, not any actual problems with wort boiling, yeast killing, etc. The water here doesn't have an aroma and isn't terrible tasting, but having grown up on well and spring water i can clearly taste it in the water. This in itself probably isn't so bad, but if i allow a glass of water to sit overnight, the bottom 1\3 will taste like pool water, so i know the level of chlorine is high, and i don't want that flavor in my beer.

I'm leaning towards the campden tablets (1 will treat up to 20g of water) since filling the bucket, dropping in the tablet, and letting it sit overnight is far easier than pre-boiling water (since i'm only getting a 4g stock-pot to start with).

So in particular i'm really looking for advice on campden tablets, but if someone has tried both that would be the most valued info.
 
Add a half a Campden tablet to a 5 Gallon batch of water, there is no reason in the world not to do it and you can use the water immediately, you don't need to leave it over night to work, the Campden works immediately.
You don't want it reacting badly in the mash and producing nasty off-flavours and Campden is cheap.
 
Chlorine will gas off in th boil or over a few hours at room temp. However some districts use chloramine instead of- or in addition to chlorine. Chloramine will not gas off. Either use a carbon filter (I use a Pur faucet filter) or Campden tabs. This is an issue for fresh water aquarium keepers too.
 
As I do with my aquarium water, I fill up empty gallon jugs (Arizona iced tea bottles) with cold water and leave them uncapped for about a week. This allows off-gassing and leads to a "cleaner" smelling water.

If it is good enough for the fish tank, it should be good enough for my brewing.

Does anyone foresee a problem with this?
 
The only problem would be if your municipality uses chloramine (yours apparently does not). Chloramine must be filtered out or removed chemically. Presumably your water report would say what is used in your area.
 
As I do with my aquarium water, I fill up empty gallon jugs (Arizona iced tea bottles) with cold water and leave them uncapped for about a week. This allows off-gassing and leads to a "cleaner" smelling water.

If it is good enough for the fish tank, it should be good enough for my brewing.

Does anyone foresee a problem with this?

Just use Campden and then if you must, then allow that to off-gas, if you are going straight to boil there is no need to let it off-gas, why take a chance on chloramines vs chlorine, Campden is cheap.
 
Thanks for all the replies. I did end up using campden tablets. At $2.22 for 100 tablets, it beats the crap out of buying a filter, and it's faster and easier, so all around a big win. I don't mind drinking the water, but don't want off-flavor in my beer.
 
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Chlorine will gas off in th boil or over a few hours at room temp. However some districts use chloramine instead of- or in addition to chlorine. Chloramine will not gas off. Either use a carbon filter (I use a Pur faucet filter) or Campden tabs. This is an issue for fresh water aquarium keepers too.

I use a carbon filter for all my brew water, but I do not trust it at all to remove chloramine (which they do use here) to below a detectable (by taste) level.

The problem with trying to filter away chloramine is that the water has to be in contact with the carbon filter for a much longer time than happens when you flow it through at normal faucet pressure. Unless you're willing/able to slow the flow to a mere trickle, hit it with campden too.
 
They typically don't report chlorine or choloramine levels. At least, they don't on the water reports I've seen.

Mine reports PPM of Chlorine but made no mention of chloramines.


They do mention "halocetic acids" and "total trihalomethanes" which they list as "byproducts of drinking water disinfection" but I have no idea what those are.
 
Adding a campden tablet to your water while it's coming up to strike temperature will eliminate your chlorines and/or chloramines present. Super simple and inexpensive.
 
I see they are available as either sodium or potassium metabisulfite...is there a reason to choose one over the other?
 
Mine reports PPM of Chlorine but made no mention of chloramines.


They do mention "halocetic acids" and "total trihalomethanes" which they list as "byproducts of drinking water disinfection" but I have no idea what those are.

Total trihalomethanes would be the chloramine, plus any other combination of methane and random halogens present (such as Fluorine) that may happen to react in the wonder that is water treatment. If they mention that definitely use Campden. Chloramines added a nasty "twang" to my first two batches here in the city.
 
Total trihalomethanes would be the chloramine, plus any other combination of methane and random halogens present (such as Fluorine) that may happen to react in the wonder that is water treatment. If they mention that definitely use Campden. Chloramines added a nasty "twang" to my first two batches here in the city.

Thanks man. Funny you should mention it but I've been fighting some nasty off flavors lately and ended up buying a reverse osmosis system last week. I just installed it and now I'm going down the rabbit hole of brewing salts and stuff to build my water. I've never messed with any sort of water additions at all, just brewed with city water I dechlorinated with campden tabs!
 
If you're running your water through a carbon filter to treat chlorine, pay attention to your water flow. For a typical 10" x 2.5" (nominal) carbon filter, keep your flow at 0.5 gallons per minute or slower. Need faster flow? You'll need a larger carbon filter or more small carbon filters.

Russ
 
If you investigate the spec's on those RV water filters, you'll see a Max Flow Rating of 2.5 gpm. The manufacturer offers nothing in terms of performance specs. They imply: simply run your garden hose flow (typically up to about 5 gpm) though the filter to "reduce bad taste, odor, chlorine and sediment."

If you are going to use carbon, I'd stick with a carbon block with known flow rates and chlorine capacity.

Russ
 
“They” (whomever they may be in the real world) say in the directions that I see for Campden tablets to use one per gallon. Is ”ONE” adequate for 7.5 gallons of sparge and Mash water? I know for a fact that we use Chloramine here..they just switched over to it and it IS in our water report. I strongly suggest that people look at their water report...there is all kinds of crap in water and it tells you where a lot of it comes from. I just want to get my first batch of beer, that I should be making next week, correct as possible. Thank you, kindly :)
 
“They” (whomever they may be in the real world) say in the directions that I see for Campden tablets to use one per gallon. Is ”ONE” adequate for 7.5 gallons of sparge and Mash water?

For chlorine/chloramines, one campden tablet for 7.5 gallons is more than enough.
 

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