Chlorine taste in water

zippy84 said:

Hello,

This is my 3rd or 4th time brewing. So I wanted to be a bit more clinical to improve my results. First attempts worked out pretty good.

This time I decided to treat my tap water (which is drinkable) a little before the brew so I filtered the water, then boiled it. Then left it sitting overnight in a plastic fermenter which had been sanitized with a bleach/vinegar solution - 5 gallons water, 40ml bleach, 40ml vinegar...rinsed bucket after about 15mins.

Having let my water sit all night I had a taste this morning and it tastes like chlorine!! There isn't a taste of chlorine normally from my tap water. Has the bucket absorbed the bleach from the sanitizing? I threw in a dissolved campden tab there now... will this get rid of chlorine taste?

Zippy

Click to expand...

Yooper said:

It does sound like the chlorine smell came from the bleach... I'd dump it and rinse the bucket well (or get a new bucket).

Click to expand...

zippy84 said:

Then left it sitting overnight in a plastic fermenter which had been sanitized with a bleach/vinegar solution - 5 gallons water, 40ml bleach, 40ml vinegar...rinsed bucket after about 15mins.

Click to expand...

ArcaneXor said:

This is not a recommended practice for several reasons. First, mixing vinegar with bleach produces chlorine gas, which is not exactly safe. Bleach is pretty useless for sanitizing anyway, since it must be rinsed - unlike a wet contact sanitizer. And finally, bleach can produce very undesirable off-flavors in beer, even in very small amounts.

Invest in some StarSan or Iodophor!

Click to expand...

Chap said:

I was listening to an old episode of Basic Brewing Radio today. The inventor of Star San was talking sanitation, both with bleach and Star San. He basically said that bleach without vinegar was useless as a sanitizer. He recommended 1 oz of bleach mixed into a gallon (might be off on the water amount) of water then 1 oz of white vinegar added to it. This made the best sanitizer.

Click to expand...