Campden

Three batches under my belt and I just found out that my city water has chloramine in it. I might just switch to bottled water but have been looking into campden tablets as well.

When do you put the campden in the water? Should I just fill my bucket and treat the whole 5 gallons at the start? However, if I do that my ~3 gallons won't be very cold anymore when it comes time to add the wort to it.

Some in the pot before the boil and some in the bucket just before adding wort? As I type this I lean more and more towards store bought water

I would (I actually did) invest in a water purifier that hooks up to the faucet....I don't have any experience with Campden Tabs

I'll look into that too. I've always read "if your tap water tastes good, brew with it" and it tastes fine to me but I've also been drinking tap water all my life and am not picky about it at all.

But, out of curiosity, I did check the Water Depts website and they use chloramine. I don't know how much, I live in Maine so I'm sure it's nothing like levels used in the big cities, but it's there. I'll do my next batch with spring water and I guess if my first two batches that are conditioning now taste fine I won't worry about it too much.

I throw in the crushed campden tablet on brew day and stir it up.

I thought Camden tabs are potassium sulfate which is used for wine making not beer?
All chlorine needs is to leave it in open air for an hour and it will be gone. If you can't taste it then it's not worth worrying about. You beer will taste like the water it's made from so you need to find water you like the taste of.

How did your first 3 batches turn out?

Jayman931 said:

I would (I actually did) invest in a water purifier that hooks up to the faucet....I don't have any experience with Campden Tabs

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I have a Pur water thing on the faucet it works well.

snowydog said:

I thought Camden tabs are potassium sulfate which is used for wine making not beer?
All chlorine needs is to leave it in open air for an hour and it will be gone. If you can't taste it then it's not worth worrying about. You beer will taste like the water it's made from so you need to find water you like the taste of.

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It's chloramine, not chlorine. Big difference in terms of brewing, apparently.

jbsg02 said:

How did your first 3 batches turn out?

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First one has been in bottles for two weeks and fermented a little hot due to my noobness so it's pretty green.

Third batch is still in the bucket.

2nd batch, however, was a blueberry wheat and it came out pretty awesome. I had about 8oz left over from bottling and I drank it warm/flat and throughly enjoyed it.