Chloramine boils off in 5- 20 minutes according to my water company

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It does boil off, just takes longer. SF water works says it takes 20 minutes in their city water.

No, that's not so. It's more like hours and hours, just to get to a half-life. In practical terms, chloramines do not boil off. Chlorine does, if the entire amount of water is boiled and the brew is not topped off with unboiled water.

The easy way to deal with chlorine is to just put the brewing water out overnight and let the chlorine dissipate and forget boiling it.

For chloramines, adding 1 campden tablet to 20 gallons of water will cause the chloramine to dissipate.
 
No, that's not so. It's more like hours and hours, just to get to a half-life. In practical terms, chloramines do not boil off. Chlorine does, if the entire amount of water is boiled and the brew is not topped off with unboiled water.

Do you have a source for this information that is not the sketchy document hosted on hbd.org?

The SF waterwork website says it takes twenty minutes to boil chloramine off.
 
Do you have a source for this information that is not the sketchy document hosted on hbd.org?

The SF waterwork website says it takes twenty minutes to boil chloramine off.

Going to add now http://www.phila.gov/water/fact_sheets.html

Says it takes 5 minutes of boiling to remove half of chloramine:

Does boiling improve the taste of tap water? It is unlikely that you will notice any taste difference. The primary reason for the taste of tap water is the chloramine (chlorine) that is in the water. This gives the water a slight chlorine taste. The chloramine is there to maintain the freshness of the water throughout the City. Chloramine is used because it is persistent. Boiling water for five minutes might only reduce the chloramine level by half. It will not get rid of the chloramine. Placing the water in the refrigerator in a water jug will help to reduce the chlorine taste since colder water has a less noticeable taste.
 
Going to add now http://www.phila.gov/water/fact_sheets.html

Says it takes 5 minutes of boiling to remove half of chloramine:

Does boiling improve the taste of tap water? It is unlikely that you will notice any taste difference. The primary reason for the taste of tap water is the chloramine (chlorine) that is in the water. This gives the water a slight chlorine taste. The chloramine is there to maintain the freshness of the water throughout the City. Chloramine is used because it is persistent. Boiling water for five minutes might only reduce the chloramine level by half. It will not get rid of the chloramine. Placing the water in the refrigerator in a water jug will help to reduce the chlorine taste since colder water has a less noticeable taste.

http://www.chloramine.org/chloraminefacts.htm

Read up here a bit.

It's not as easy as you think. It will break down into bi products, and still be intact.

Placing it in the fridge, might "hide" the taste. Similar to the fact that a colder beer, will mask the fact that it has a bad taste. Look at a BMC beer. Drink that at cask/cellar temp, v. a craft or home brew and let me know which taste better. Your "quote" even says that it's only at it's half life. Which means it's not gone, which can still produce an off flavor!

Chloramine isn't chlorine. It's a combo of ammonia AND chlorine that are bonded. You can beat the chlorine chain, but are left with the still nasty ammonia side of the chain.

Chloramine is used because people will think they don't have the smell or taste of chlorine, but it's there. It's hidden much better. It's "persistent' as your quote says.. More so than you are leading to believe.

Boiling it longer does little to nothing. You can super chlorinate it, which is impractical in brewing. Or you can use a campden tablet, or a really large amount of carbon to reduce it. UV is the best way to handle it, and that can be done from getting water from places like the Glacier water machines that use RO and UV to clean the water. People that use their tap to top up their saltwater aquariums will use UV and RO exclusively, to avoid any issues. These people aren't boiling their water to use it.
 
http://www.chloramine.org/chloraminefacts.htm

Chloramine isn't chlorine. It's a combo of ammonia AND chlorine that are bonded. You can beat the chlorine chain, but are left with the still nasty ammonia side of the chain.

I know what chloramine is my friend. I just want to know what document says it takes more than 20 minutes of boiling water to get rid of most of it. And there are none except that old document from the 90's hosted on that beer website that is not even well written. Why not well written? Because it doesn't say "hours and hours" of boiling. It just says "longer" (then chlorine). Like ... in seconds maybe?

It doesn't matter what that document says. It's dated.

There are many AUTHORITATIVE places that claim it takes minutes of boiling to get rid of chloramine.

And your 'half-life'... meaning half of it can be removed: 5 minutes.

Chlorine evaporates completely before water reaches boiling point. It's quite unstable.

This is something THIS website in particular is going to have to dispell as a bad bit of information that has gone on way too long. Not that most people will want to boil their water for 20 minutes anyway but ... really let's stop this madness.
 
Ok everyone calm down... This web page should shed light on some of this...
http://hbd.org/ajdelange/Brewing_articles/BT_Chlorine.pdf
It states that the half life is somewhere around 26.6 mins but it would have to undergo many half lives to be completely removed... So if you do two half lives then there's still 1/4th of the chloramine in it. So to completely remove it then yes it would take hours
 
And your 'half-life'... meaning half of it can be removed: 5 minutes.

Yes, I'm incredibly familiar with the half-life concept, as medications involve calculating half lifes.

The thing with removing chloramine is that you don't want HALF of it, or a quarter of it, or an eight of it, or any bit of it left. It has a very low taste threshold in beer. It would take hours and hours to remove enough to not impact the flavor.

OR. You can add a crushed campden tablet (potassium metabisulfate) to 20 gallons of water, stir it. And it will interact with the chloramine and give you usable water in moments.

Anyway, one of the signs of chlorine or chloramine in brewing water is a burnt-cloves kind of flavor, like band-aids would taste if you tasted them.
 
Yes, I'm incredibly familiar with the half-life concept, as medications involve calculating half lifes.

The thing with removing chloramine is that you don't want HALF of it, or a quarter of it, or an eight of it, or any bit of it left. It has a very low taste threshold in beer. It would take hours and hours to remove enough to not impact the flavor.

OR. You can add a crushed campden tablet (potassium metabisulfate) to 20 gallons of water, stir it. And it will interact with the chloramine and give you usable water in moments.

Anyway, one of the signs of chlorine or chloramine in brewing water is a burnt-cloves kind of flavor, like band-aids would taste if you tasted them.

Do you need to adjust the campden amount for less water? Say a 5 gallon batch. Guess I should say 7 gallons or so to start.
 
Ok everyone calm down... This web page should shed light on some of this...
http://hbd.org/ajdelange/Brewing_articles/BT_Chlorine.pdf
It states that the half life is somewhere around 26.6 mins but it would have to undergo many half lives to be completely removed... So if you do two half lives then there's still 1/4th of the chloramine in it. So to completely remove it then yes it would take hours

That is the dated document from the 90's.... In contrast, multiple .gov and city water websites are saying that it takes 5 minutes to remove half of chloramine (and 5 minutes for another 50% reduction, etc) or approximately 20 minutes to remove most of chloramines. I don't understand why you guys can't accept that.
 
Ok everyone calm down... This web page should shed light on some of this...
http://hbd.org/ajdelange/Brewing_articles/BT_Chlorine.pdf
It states that the half life is somewhere around 26.6 mins but it would have to undergo many half lives to be completely removed... So if you do two half lives then there's still 1/4th of the chloramine in it. So to completely remove it then yes it would take hours

That is the dated document from the 90's.... In contrast, multiple .gov and city water websites are saying that it takes 5 minutes to remove half of chloramine (and 5 minutes for another 50% reduction, etc) or approximately 20 minutes to move most of chloramines. Why is that so difficult to accept?
 
That is the dated document from the 90's.... In contrast, multiple .gov and city water websites are saying that it takes 5 minutes to remove half of chloramine (and 5 minutes for another 50% reduction, etc) or approximately 20 minutes to remove most of chloramines. I don't understand why you guys can't accept that.

Well, "dated" but extensive data, proven scientifically vs. "my water company says" is really not making it easy to accept. I won't even get into the probable health issues dealing with chloramine, which your water company will deny but you can do your own research. Just because your water company tells you "boil 20 minutes to remove most of the chloramines" doesn't make it correct, nor does it make it scientifically proven.

Perhaps this threadjacking can end now, and we could argue this point in the "brew science" forum where the water chemistry experts hang out? This long argumentative discussion has no place in the "beginner's forum" and we are getting nowhere.

Thanks.
 
Well, "dated" but extensive data, proven scientifically vs. "my water company says" is really not making it easy to accept. I won't even get into the probable health issues dealing with chloramine, which your water company will deny but you can do your own research. Just because your water company tells you "boil 20 minutes to remove most of the chloramines" doesn't make it correct, nor does it make it scientifically proven.

Perhaps this threadjacking can end now, and we could argue this point in the "brew science" forum where the water chemistry experts hang out? This long argumentative discussion has no place in the "beginner's forum" and we are getting nowhere.

Thanks.

I don't think it's fair you make a counter argument and then say that's it, move it along, especially since you are a moderator--you are setting me up. I don't think it's fair you are appealing to emotions instead of facts "my water company" vs "science". There is more practical science in a water company than in an unmarked badly written document hosted on a beer website. The document isn't science, it's an anonymous paper based on other papers. No one has to vouch for its authenticity.

Anyway, cheers. I'm off to play.
 
I don't think it's fair you make a counter argument and then say that's it, move it along, especially since you are a moderator--you are setting me up. I don't think it's fair you are appealing to emotions instead of facts "my water company" vs "science". There is more practical science in a water company than in an unmarked badly written document hosted on a beer website. The document isn't science, it's an anonymous paper based on other papers. No one has to vouch for its authenticity.

Anyway, cheers. I'm off to play.

Incidentally, that "scientific water paper" you linked to says that your chloramine may reduce by half by boiling and that it will "taste better if you put it in the refriderator". Hardly a persuasive scientific paper. Sure, you may not taste it. But it will be there!

The author of that (very well known paper) is AJ deLange, the noted brewing water chemistry expert. It's not "dated" in the sense that the experiments are invalid.

The fact that you state: "There is more practical science in a water company than in an unmarked badly written document hosted on a beer website. The document isn't science, it's an anonymous paper based on other papers. No one has to vouch for its authenticity" proves you a, havent' read the science, b. are not a scientist yourself, and c. have no clue what you are talking about.

Mr. deLange is quoted in brewing science textbooks as an authority, he spoke this year as an expert at the National Homebrewers Conference, and he is almost always listed in the bibliographies as a source in brewing water texts and websites.

Please give your references for your claim that your water company says that the chloramine will disappear in a 20 minute boil, so that at least the people who are scientists can see it.

Let's start a new thread in the Brewing Science forum concerning this issue, and these posts will be moved.
 
Yeah. I asked my water companies chemist whether or not we used chlorine or chloramine. He said chloramine. I asked how to get rid of it for brewing purposes. He said sodium or potassium metabisulfite is the only way. Otherwise any phenols produced during the brewing process would bond with the chloramines.
 
Yeah. I asked my water companies chemist whether or not we used chlorine or chloramine. He said chloramine. I asked how to get rid of it for brewing purposes. He said sodium or potassium metabisulfite is the only way. Otherwise any phenols produced during the brewing process would bond with the chloramines.

^^ this. You can also use a carbon catalyst filter but form my discussions with people smarter than me, it has to be exposed to the filter too long to have significant impact in real-world usage.
 
Going to add now http://www.phila.gov/water/fact_sheets.html

Says it takes 5 minutes of boiling to remove half of chloramine:

Does boiling improve the taste of tap water? It is unlikely that you will notice any taste difference. The primary reason for the taste of tap water is the chloramine (chlorine) that is in the water. This gives the water a slight chlorine taste. The chloramine is there to maintain the freshness of the water throughout the City. Chloramine is used because it is persistent. Boiling water for five minutes might only reduce the chloramine level by half. It will not get rid of the chloramine. Placing the water in the refrigerator in a water jug will help to reduce the chlorine taste since colder water has a less noticeable taste.

I did just want to bold iambeer's resource in the appropriate place. The text is from his source, but the bolding is mine.

Notice that the source specifically states, "It will not get rid of the chloramine".
 
Did this move to the brewing science area?

FYI - After a very quick search on google I found a website from a Hawaiian county which claims that boiling is not a practical method of removing chloramines, and a paper from "The Scottish Centre for infection and Environmental Health" Titled "Chemicals in Drinking Water: Chloramines" which states that Chloramines can be removed from water using activated carbon with low flow rates (5 to 10 minutes contact time), followed by residual ammonia adsoption using mineral zeolite media. The use of reducing agents such as sodium sulfite, sodium bisulfite, sodium thiosulfite, and ascorbic acid (vitamin C) also removes monochromatic from water. Boiling and aeration are ineffective methods for monochloramine removal.
 
Did this move to the brewing science area?

FYI - After a very quick search on google I found a website from a Hawaiian county which claims that boiling is not a practical method of removing chloramines, and a paper from "The Scottish Centre for infection and Environmental Health" Titled "Chemicals in Drinking Water: Chloramines" which states that Chloramines can be removed from water using activated carbon with low flow rates (5 to 10 minutes contact time), followed by residual ammonia adsoption using mineral zeolite media. The use of reducing agents such as sodium sulfite, sodium bisulfite, sodium thiosulfite, and ascorbic acid (vitamin C) also removes monochromatic from water. Boiling and aeration are ineffective methods for monochloramine removal.

I'm mostly using the resource linked to in an above post: http://hbd.org/ajdelange/Brewing_articles/BT_Chlorine.pdf

I recognized the paper as being by AJ deLange, and the experiments sound perfectly sound, even though the paper does have a date of more than 11 years ago. AJ can let us know if he has anything newer published.
 
iambeer,

Don't listen to Yooper or trust that old paper by AJ Delange. ;)

Go ahead and boil for 20 minutes, you will be fine. All the Chloramine will be gone.
Thats what I do and my beer tastes good. ;)

:D


Keep in mind that no one here knows what they are talking about, they just like to talk. You wont learn anything by reading articles here. Has anyone here won anything, or been brewing for more than a year?

Trust your city government, their purpose is to take care of their citizens. ;)

>>That is the dated document from the 90's.... In contrast, multiple .gov and city water websites are saying that it takes 5 minutes to remove half of chloramine (and 5 minutes for another 50% reduction, etc) or approximately 20 minutes to remove most of chloramines. I don't understand why you guys can't accept that.

I agree with you. The Chloramine will be long gone, before the end of your 60 minute boil.
Most cities run excellent breweries. The city of Stone in California makes great IPAs. The city of Sierra Nevada on California also makes good beer.

1. Make sure you never squeeze your grain bag if you steep your grain, else you will get Tannins in your beer.

2. Make sure you transfer your beer to a secondary after 5 days. Leaving your beer on that dead yeast cake will cause autolysis and ruin your beer.

3. Don't use Aluminum pots, else you will get Alzheimers.

4. Don't let your beer get stale, bottle it after a week in the secondary (in clear bottles, so sunlight can kill any foreign yeast).
Give it a week to carbonate and start drinking it.

5. This is all true, no sarcasm at all. :mug:
 
Who cares what the half life is? Even if boiling for 20 minutes really reduces the chloramine to 1/16 of its original level, and even if that is enough to eliminate any impact on the beer, who is going to boil all their water for 20 minutes or more, then cool it down to use for mashing and sparging when all you have to do is add a Campden tablet? Or if you are doing an extract brew, why waste time and propane or electricity boiling water before adding the extract?
 
>> then cool it down to use for mashing and sparging when all you have to do is add a Campden tablet?

Hey! Don't exagerate. Its HALF a Campden tablet for a 5 gallon All Grain batch. ;)


But I can understand avoiding using them, they are expensive. Like 3 cents per tablet, cut in half, thats 1.5 cents extra for a 5 gallon batch. I'd rather have bad taste than spring for that extra cash.

http://www.austinhomebrew.com/product_info.php?products_id=810
 
For the life of me, I can't understand people's avoidance of using campden. I see all kinds of bad info on this site about how to get rid of chlorine/chloramine when it can be eliminated with a 1/4 tab per 5 gals of water. I use it in every batch.

I just went and looked at the price tag on my campden tablets. It was $1.90 for 50 tabs.

I think $.08 per batch is pretty damned good insurance against band-aid beer.
 
For the life of me, I can't understand people's avoidance of using campden. I see all kinds of bad info on this site about how to get rid of chlorine/chloramine when it can be eliminated with a 1/4 tab per 5 gals of water. I use it in every batch.

I just went and looked at the price tag on my campden tablets. It was $1.90 for 50 tabs.

I think $.08 per batch is pretty damned good insurance against band-aid beer.

Missed the point. It's easier to argue against people, and boil it for 20 minutes and then figure it's... maybe halfway gone..

I too think that if you use tap, a campden tablet will fix all of that quickly and you can move on to more pressing matters.
 
The document isn't science,

Funny, I rather thought it was. A bunch of experiments were planned and carried out, the data analyzed and the results written up. Isn't that what science is?

it's an anonymous paper...
Hardly. It was published in Brewing Techniques with my name plainly attached. It appears on my website and sites that mirror it with my name next to it.


...based on other papers.

Guess you haven't read it. It was based on experiments. The title was "Experiments in removing chlorine and chloramine from brewing water" Naturally there were some references but all the data came from the experiments.


No one has to vouch for its authenticity.
I do.

Now that the foolishness has been dealt with a couple of comments on the science (if we can accept that there was any): One of the points the paper makes is that the chemistry of chloramine is complex and not fully understood. At least it wasn't when I wrote the paper. As a consequence of this the half life of chloramine can be variable depending on many other factors. I am not at all surprised at the range reported by some of the water companies. In my experiments I found appreciably different half lives for the two municipal waters and the water I chloraminated myself.

The observed half life is going to depend on how the boiling is carried out as well. Le Chatelier's principle suggests, for example, that good ventilation and the vigor of the boil (how extensively steam is sparging the water) should have an effect on the rate of removal.

All that may be well and good but it should be clear to anyone in his right mind that boiling, whether the half life be 26.6 minutes or 5 minutes, is not a practical way to remove chloramine from water relative to the simplicity of adding a Campden tablet.

One other comment I caught implied that RO units remove chloramine. They do but it is actually a carbon filter that precedes the RO membrane that does the job. Chloramine (or chlorine) will poison the membrane pretty quickly and so water that enters the membrane cartridge must be chloramine free.
 
Did this move to the brewing science area?

FYI - After a very quick search on google I found a website from a Hawaiian county which claims that boiling is not a practical method of removing chloramines, and a paper from "The Scottish Centre for infection and Environmental Health" Titled "Chemicals in Drinking Water: Chloramines" which states that Chloramines can be removed from water using activated carbon with low flow rates (5 to 10 minutes contact time), followed by residual ammonia adsoption using mineral zeolite media. The use of reducing agents such as sodium sulfite, sodium bisulfite, sodium thiosulfite, and ascorbic acid (vitamin C) also removes monochromatic from water. Boiling and aeration are ineffective methods for monochloramine removal.

I was very clear that I was only suggesting that there are many sources (more recent, authoritative sources) that claim chloramine can be removed in minutes. But look at these responses. It's as if I shot their mommas! Hilarious.
 
>. But look at these responses. It's as if I shot their mommas! Hilarious.

No, its that you came on like an A$$, telling everyone they were wrong.

The danger is that some noob will listen to you and brew bad tasting beer, because they didn't remove the Chloramine.

No one is forcing you to listen to AJ or anyone else. What do they know? Don't take his word, brew your beer with a 20 minute boil to remove the Chloramine.
I'll bet it tastes great.

If you had phrased your initial comments better, you wouldn't have caused people to mock you.




PS I work in NYC. I trust the city government. I've trusted them for years. Especially several weeks after 9/11 when the mayor said it was safe to go back to your apartments a few blocks away. Governments always have the best information, are well motivated, and are heavily involved in brewing.
 
The Scottish Centre's comment about following GAC by ion exchange is interesting. At pH 9 72% of the ammonia appears as ammonium ion (NH4+), at pH 8 that's 96% and at pH 7 and below more than 99.6%. In the brewing context ammonium is a benefit as it is a yeast nutrient. Most of the yeast supplements one buys contain diammonium phosphate for this reason. If you are using the water for dialysis or fish that ammonium probably isn't so great though most aquaria are equipped with ammonium removing filters as fish poop contains a fair amount of it (urea). Ammonium ion is produced when Campden tablets are used too.
 
I am sorry that so many users on forums like this hide behind anonymous avatars and then disparage the advice of people that have enough confidence in their advice to actually sign their name with it. I strongly recommend that anyone using any forum take any advice with a grain of salt if the poster isn't willing to stake their name and reputation behind it. I fully trust the advice that AJ deLange provides (but I don't always agree with it! ;-) ).

An important point for this thread is that boiling to remove chloramines is not very suitable as a treatment option given the slow progress and energy usage. It pales in comparison with the relatively simplistic treatment via metabisulfite addition (Campden tablet).
 
iambeer got me thinking.

Based on reading AJs paper, maybe to save the 1.5 cents for half a Campden tablet, one could instead store 15 gallons of water in an open topped barrel for a month or two, stirring twice a day. After 60 days of moderate agitation, hopefully a fair amount of the chloramine will be gone.

If you store it outdoors, mosquitos will lay their eggs in it. So store it indoors and just carry the 10 gallons outside when ready to use it. If 60 days isn't enough, try 90-120 days.

At least you save the 1.5 cents for half a Campden tablet.
 
I was very clear that I was only suggesting that there are many sources (more recent, authoritative sources) that claim chloramine can be removed in minutes. But look at these responses. It's as if I shot their mommas! Hilarious.

It's not hilarious at all. You make disparaging remarks about noted brewing water chemistry experts, and say things that aren't true. You just look like a total ass, with a penchant for trolling. If people are laughing, they are laughing AT you, not with you.

Water chemistry is an important part of brewing, but like so many things in brewing, if the brewer is happy with the results of his attempts then the area of water chemistry is ignored. That doesn't make it unimportant as a topic, it's just unimportant to the brewer. There are plenty of brewers who brew "good enough" beer.

Discussing appropriate chloramine removal techniques for those who want to do it is important, so espousing senseless made-up "facts" will be challenged.
 
I was very clear that I was only suggesting that there are many sources (more recent, authoritative sources) that claim chloramine can be removed in minutes. But look at these responses. It's as if I shot their mommas! Hilarious.

Go buy a chloramine test kit. Do your method. Test. Post results.

If you want to be taken seriously, take your science seriously.

Until then, the standard treatment for chloramine is Campden tabs.
 
For what it's worth, I use vitamin C to treat my water instead of campden tablets. I purchased a big bottle of powdered vitamin C (probably a lifetime supply) for a couple bucks online.
 
For what it's worth, I use vitamin C to treat my water instead of campden tablets. I purchased a big bottle of powdered vitamin C (probably a lifetime supply) for a couple bucks online.
How much do you use? I have some of this from Puritan's pride but wasn't sure on the dosage.
 
How much do you use? I have some of this from Puritan's pride but wasn't sure on the dosage.

16mg per gallon of water for typical water treatment concentrations. The half-life for the reaction is about 4 minutes, so what I do is add the vitamin c as I start filling up the pot and heating it for dough-in. By the time I get to my strike temp it's usually been long enough for the reaction to have removed the bulk of the chlorine/chloramine.
 
Thanks Martin and AJ (and others) for continuing to help us understand water issues relating to homebrewing. It's making my beer better, it's not as hard as it initially sounds (thanks to your explainations and calculators), it's cheap, it works, and it is science not voodoo.

Cheers. :mug:
 
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