Water treatment with campden.

I don't know if this is the appropriate forum, but here goes.

I need to remove the chlorine from my water. It is producing a hospital smell in my otherwise excellent blond beers that I really cant stand. I read a bunch on it and it seems that water can be de-chlorinated by either leaving it to sit, boiling and cooling it, or using campden/sodium-metabisulphite.

I bought some campden tablets, but they don't come with any instructions, so I am unsure how much to use. Is one tablet enough for 5 gallons of water, or is this too much/too little to add?

Also does anyone know what by-products I will be left with after the chemical reaction? My water is already very hard (Toronto hydro says 125 ppm Ca/Mg) and I am interested what my leftover compounds will be.

If anyone can point me in the right direction I would really appreciate it.

one tablet is supposedly good to treat up to 20 gallons.

I have been reading up on wine stuff and they are using 1 tablet for a gallon of must but I think that is because there is no boil to kill off bacteria, wild yeast etc and to just get rid of chlorine/chloramine you don't need it so concentrated. just a guess though.

So a half tablet will give me 10 gallons of water with no chlorine or chloramine? Sounds pretty good to me. Thanks for your help.

AshtrayDinner said:

I don't know if this is the appropriate forum, but here goes.

I need to remove the chlorine from my water. It is producing a hospital smell in my otherwise excellent blond beers that I really cant stand. I read a bunch on it and it seems that water can be de-chlorinated by either leaving it to sit, boiling and cooling it, or using campden/sodium-metabisulphite.

I bought some campden tablets, but they don't come with any instructions, so I am unsure how much to use. Is one tablet enough for 5 gallons of water, or is this too much/too little to add?

Also does anyone know what by-products I will be left with after the chemical reaction? My water is already very hard (Toronto hydro says 125 ppm Ca/Mg) and I am interested what my leftover compounds will be.

If anyone can point me in the right direction I would really appreciate it.

Click to expand...

Everything you ever wanted to know about removing chloramine from brewing liquor:

http://www.hbd.org/brewbayou/LIBRARY/Articles/BT_Chlorine .pdf

In a nutshell:

Potassium metabisulfite (campden) is a fairly strong reducing agent (that is why it is added to wine at bottling, it reduces residual oxygen in the package) and it will reduce chloramine in water. 1 tablet in 20 gallons is about enough to reduce whatever the maximum allowable chloramine content is (5 ppm maybe?). You actually probably have less in your water as even if it left the plant with the max some of it would have reacted with something on the way to your house. Better safe than sorry though, use a tablet per 20 gallons.

The by products left in your water are very small amounts of sulfate and ammonium, no problems there.

In the likely event that not all of the campden is needed to reduce the chloramine, you will have some residual campden but it will find something to reduce in the mash so no problems there either.

Boiling and cooling will not reliably remove chloramine. Letting it sit will, but who knows how long you need to leave it. Campden is practically free, works in an instant and is reliable.