Campden tablet replacement

I searched high and low in this town for Campden tablets and couldn't find them.

Eventually i ended up at the pet store and bought something called NutraFin Aqua plus. Its a liquid that you add to tap water before adding it to a fish tank. It says it will remove chlorine and chloramine from the water.

Here's a youtube; [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_a81JRBglk]YouTube - Nutrafin aqua plus introduction[/ame]

Anyone ever used something like this for brewing?

I think the part about eliminating the chlorine / chloramine sounds fine, as does getting rid of heavy metals. Not quite so sure about the parts about replacing the natural protective mucous membrane of your fish, or the "PHE" herbal extract with its "natural sedating effect." Drink enough of it, my beer is pretty good at the latter, as is.

Boiling gets rid of chlorine.

Just buy a brita filter and make excellent brewing water. RDWHAHB

Forrest

it's the chloramine i'd like to see gone.

will my brita do that?

TacoGuthrie said:

it's the chloramine i'd like to see gone.

will my brita do that?

Click to expand...

Doubtful. Where are you located? Is it something you can mail order? You only need a small amount if you cut the tablets up.

Regarding the fish stuff.. I remember a thread on another site a few years back... they wrote the manufacturer and got a response about how it's not "certified" or something like that for human consumption. It kind of seemed to indicate that they didn't pay the price to have it tested, seeing it's meant for fish tanks. Who knows though.

Personally, I would checking into mail order before using it.

I looked into it after my post and no, the Brita filter doesn't remove chloramine.

Jeff, that "not certified for human consumption" is a little concerning. I'll look into it but most likely I will just pick up some tablets when I can.

Do you know that there are chlorimines in your water? You can go online and get the content of your water from your city.

Here is some info:

Issue Jul/Aug 2004
Online Date Tuesday, 22 June 2004

Dear Mr. Wizard,
I recently moved to a city that uses chloramine in the water supply. Looking for suggestions in removing these chloramines from my brewing water, I posted a question to an online brewing board. It was suggested that adding sodium metabisulfite to the water would clear the beer of this compound. Is this true? How does it work and what would be an approximate amount to add per gallon?

Alistair Scriven
Portland, Oregon

Mr. Wizard replies:
This is an interesting question and I did some digging to come up with a good answer for you. Dechlorination is important to brewers for flavor reasons. Compounds called chlorophenols are formed when beer interacts with chlorine and these compounds have a fairy unpleasant aroma. Dechlori-nation is also important to municipal water authorities in the event that chlorinated water needs to be discharged into the environment.

Although many reducing agents can be used to dechlorinate water, the ones that are most accessible to homebrewers are sodium metabisulfite or its cousin, potassium metabisulfite (commonly found in the Campden tablets used by winemakers). These compounds will remove chlorine from both sodium hypochlorite (bleach) and chloramine treated waters. The reaction converts chlorine into chloride and the sulfite is converted to sulfate. Chloride has no affect on aroma, is found in most water and is added by many brewers in the form of calcium chloride. Likewise, sulfate is a normal constituent of water and is added in the form of calcium sulfate by brewers. When this reaction occurs with chloramines, there are also ammonium ions released into the water. Again, this is no big deal because ammonium ions are found in a brewers mash and come from the malt. Keep in mind, we are talking about very low concentrations of all of these reaction products due to the low concentrations of chlorine and metabisulfite involved in the reaction.

Although chlorinated water has a strong and easily identifiable aroma, the concentration of free chlorine is usually less than two parts per million. The dechlorination reaction requires 1.47 mg of sodium metabisulfite to reduce 1 mg of free chlorine. In practice, this ratio is increased two–three fold. In easy to use terms, a 1/2-ounce Campden tablet can be used to dechlorinate 20 gallons of water. This reaction occurs very rapidly and all you really need to do is dissolve the metabisulfite in your water, let it sit for a minute or two and you are finished with the dechlorination process.

Many brewers boil water prior to use to drive chlorine out of the water. The boiling method works very well with water chlorinated with hypochlorite, but is less effective at removing chloramine. The metabisulfite method is fast acting, easy to perform and very effective.

will the chloramine be removed that fast also?

Thanks for the info Forrest. It's good to learn some of the chemistry. I'm still fairly new to mashing so I find I can only learn it in small steps.

I know our water has chloramine in it. I live in a small town who doesn't post their water report online. Luckily though I have a friend who works for the city in the water dept. He gave me a report that they use and he told me that chloramine is used. He just didn't know how much nor is it on the report.

I think I'll relax and have a homebrew and just find some when i find some.

If you can't find Campden tablets, look on the shelf for something called "Sterilant" in the wine section. It's a powder form of metabisulfite (sodium or potassium) that is used in winemaking. 1/4tsp of this is the same as a tablet

Just be careful. I would hate for your beer to taste like sulphur.

Forrest