Chlorine levels?

So I found out that despite my city water being insanely clean and sitting right at 7.1 pH, the Chlorine levels are apparently 2.2ppm.

My understanding is that this is kinda high. Any ideas on how to best solve this issue? I've heard of using Campden tablets, but I'm open to other suggestions.

nickmv said:

So I found out that despite my city water being insanely clean and sitting right at 7.1 pH, the Chlorine levels are apparently 2.2ppm.

My understanding is that this is kinda high. Any ideas on how to best solve this issue? I've heard of using Campden tablets, but I'm open to other suggestions.

Click to expand...

Is it chlorine, or "as chloramine"?

Chlorine can be removed just by sitting out overnight or by boiling, but chloramines cannot. For chloramines, you'd need the campden.

Ahhh, Yooper again. How goes it? I got your Oatmeal Stout aging in the closet for mid January drinking.

Anyways, here is my report from last year. Looks like just chlorine.


I've been chatting about this on reddit, and it seems people are recommending a whole home filter. I think the deal here is the mash and sparge water causing issues possibly. Know anything about that? I mean, it still has chlorine in it when mashing.


Update: I'm pretty sure my local water supply does NOT use any chloramine. In no reports dating back 5+ yrs are there any mentions of chloramine. There are levels of chlorine reported, but chloramine is never mentioned. Based off this, I'm gonna guess it's not used.

See the Sticky on Campden tablets for a simple test to see if you have chloramine and what to do about it if you do.

Water distribution systems in the US are required to maintain a disinfectant residual. 2 ppm chlorine is a typical value and it can be higher on occasion.

Chlorine is a preferred disinfectant except in waters that have dissolved organic compounds that react with the chlorine and form carcinogenic compounds. Chlorine is cheaper and has a higher killing power than chloramine. Groundwater sources are more often chlorinated, while surface water sources are more often chloraminated.

If the water is definitely chlorinated, then an activated carbon filter is suitable. That filter is not as effective on chloramines. Then you should use metabisulfite (campden) to remove either chlorine or chloramine. The other thing that activated carbon is good for is removing taste and odor from the water (pond scum taste).

In any case, removing these disinfectants is critical to good brewing and its easy to do.