How to use Campden Tablets?

Hey. I understand that campden tablets can remove chlorine and another chlora-something from tap water. But how do you use it. Does it cause the chlorine and the chlora-something to fall to the bottom of the container or does it simply vanish into thin air? If I use campden tablets do I need to throw out the last inch of so of water in the bottom of the container? Thanks.

Crush it up and dump it in the water, no need to toss any water. One tablet is more than enough for 5 gallons.

When I brew I fill my bottling bucket with 5 gallons of water, and my kettle with 4. Each gets half a crushed tablet. The bottling bucket water is so I have chlorine free water for my separate steep pot, top off, yeast rehydration, etc. My beers have improved noticeably since I started using them.

Chloramines is the word you're looking for.

I take one half of a tablet, crush it up, and dump it into the HLT before mashing. Then I take the other half of the tablet, crush it up and then put it in the HLT for sparging purposes.

LandoLincoln said:

Chloramines is the word you're looking for.

I take one half of a tablet, crush it up, and dump it into the HLT before mashing. Then I take the other half of the tablet, crush it up and then put it in the HLT for sparging purposes.

Click to expand...

Never used it myself. But doing it this way, half and half, do you find the water to be better to brew with? Or is the ph stabilizer better at this? Are the tabs used for flavor improvement or better mashing? Sorry if this is a hijack.

LouBrew13 said:

Never used it myself. But doing it this way, half and half, do you find the water to be better to brew with? Or is the ph stabilizer better at this? Are the tabs used for flavor improvement or better mashing? Sorry if this is a hijack.

Click to expand...

The tablets are purely for neutralizing chlorine/chloramine.

The chemistry is very lightly discussed here: http://byo.com/stories/wizard/artic...ing-chloramine-a-historical-hopping-mr-wizard

It looks like it breaks down the Chloramine into chloride and sulfite ions, which doesn't remove anything from the water, it just keeps the Chloramine from existing in its normal form.

The water is better to brew with *not* because of improved salt/mineral composition, but purely from neutralizing one bad element in the water.

Thanks for the info guys

I have a 15g HLT. For my strike water I heat up 9g but only use 6g, then I add 9g more to get 12g and use that to sparge. My question is: I add 1 campden tablet to the HLT with the strike water but don't add more with the sparge water. Do you think my sparge water is seeing the benefits of using the campden tablet or should I be adding half to the strike water and the other half to the sparge water?

I think that we have pretty good city water in the Detroit area. But when I put it in my camel back, after about an hour it tastes chlorine like. I'm assuming that's what we're talking about.

As bwarbiany stated up above, campden tablets break down chloramines and turns them into chloride and sulfite ions. I just read in a brewing book that there are people out there that are very allergic to sulfites, so if you do use campden tablets, then you need to tell people that there are sulfites in your beer.