Where do you buy salts from?

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hafmpty

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I've been looking online and haven't found anywhere that sells the most common brew salts (i.e. Food Grade CaCO3, NaHCO3, CaSO4, CaCl2, MgSO4, NaCl). You can buy a few here and there (Midwest, Austin, Northern), but no where I can simply order all of them.

I found some places that sell laboratory grade and reagent grade in 500g bottles for fairly cheap ($7.00 or less) but I'm not sure if I can/should put these in my water or not. Plus I have to use my company card and have the package sent to my company (which isn't a problem but I'd rather not do it).

Anyone have a good resource, website, link, etc. you could point me to?

Thanks!
 
Fair enough. Should've realized that would have been the first response. So, more specifically, where do you get your calcium carbonate (chalk) from. You don't just grind up a stick of blackboard chalk do you? And is the Epsom salt you buy at the store food grade or is it just "foot" grade?

If I can find calcium chloride, gypsum, and food grade calcium carbonate (chalk) I can round up the rest.
 
Well, I'm an idiot. Consider this thread closed. I can get the three "hard to find" chemicals from Midwest and the rest as Motobrewer says, can be found at "the grocery store."

I still would like to know whether the epsom salt at the store is food grade or not.
 
lol, sorry about my jerkish post

i buy gypsum at the homebrew store.

actually, blackboard "chalk" is generally made of gypsum.
 
Wasn't jerkish. I'm new to this and sometimes don't think of the obvious. Thanks.

What kind of shelf life do you get out of these chemicals once they've been exposed to air? Is it indefinite or do you need to use them within a certain time frame? I'm wondering because I don't brew every weekend but enough that it might be better to buy the 1lb bags rather than the 2oz bottles.
 
I buy epsom salt (MgSO4) at the pharmacy, and baking soda (NaHCO3) and NON-Iodized Salt (NaCl) (canning salt works good) at the grocery store. I just make sure the package lists only the salt and no other ingredient. I buy the rest at my LHBS. I have no idea of shelf life.
 
Epsom, Baking Soda, and Sea Salt form the grocer.

Calcium Carbonate and Calcium Chloride from LHBS or Chemical supply specializing in water treatment.

Gypsum from LHBS. I did a great deal of reasearch on the blackboard chalk. Problem is you just don;t know what it is. Crayola does not list all the ingredients and other areas suggest a high level of "binders" are used in teh process.

I read somewhere that the dust free sidewalk crayola is straight Gypsum but have not been able to confirm it.
 
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