Campden Tablets: Crushed vs. Dissolved

First time using campden tablets this weekend. I crushed up half a tablet for ~10 gal of room temp water. When I stirred it in I noticed it did not dissolve very well, plenty of white specks all over. Is that to be expected? Should I do something to help it dissolve better or is it effective like that?

Thanks

 

Anyone?

 

Are you using it to remove chloramines for beer making, or kill off wild yeast in wine must?

I use it to remove chloramines, and always crush them. If you are making beer, I don't think some chunks will really hurt things. It should dissolve all the way when you heat the water.

If you are making wine, I'm not sure I have an answer, but "you should be fine" is always a good one.

 

To remove chloramines.

I treated the 10 gallons in my BK, and then poured out of the ball valve into another pot to heat strike/sparge water. So I never heated all the water with all the chunks in it at the same time. I figure it worked fine, but just wasn't expecting to see a bunch of white crap floating after adding the crushed pill.

 

I noticed the same thing. I had little flecks floating all over the place. I did taste the water and all of the chlorine seemed gone. Did you buy them from Austin Homebrew, too?

 

I have put them in the mash tun, and in the lauter tun. Originally I crushed them, but then when I forget I saw that they dissolved readily while the water was being heated. Now I just drop then in.

The solubility of sodium metabisulfite is listed as 54 grams/100 ml water (at 25*C, IIRC), so the little tablet should dissolve freely. If it does not, I suspect that the binders in the tablet are at fault, but I suspect the sodium metabisulfite would have made it's way out of that and into your wort in sufficient quantity to do it's job. In other words, you should be fine. Pills for human use are often made with binders that are less soluble or even insoluble, the latter leading to "ghost tablets" that appear to leave unaltered in feces. (Please leave them there, and don't take them back to your doctor or pharmacist!)

I bought my Camden tablets from my LHBS, and have had no such problems. If the experience is repeated, your supplier should know--everyone can have a bad day, or a bad batch, but they can't correct the problem if they don't know about it.