Less Campden = Better FG

Hope this helps somebody...

I've always had a problem getting my beers to finish dry enough. I would routinely end up with FG's over 1.020. I have great temp control and add a few seconds of oxygen before pitching.

Since we have a lot of chloramine in our water, I have always used Campden tablets (early batches without campden had bad taste). Up until now, I've used one crushed tablet in the mash water (~5gal) and one tablet in the sparge water (~4gal). I was suspicious that this might be a problem, as I understand wine making folks use campden to stop fermentation.

My last batch, I reduced campden to 1/4 tablet in the mash water and 1/4 tablet in the sparge water. All other parameters were as before. I hit my FG spot-on (1.015). Sample doesn't seem to have the bad taste from chloramine (but time will tell). Granted, this wasn't an "official" scientific experiment, but my results seem pretty clear.

 

First of all...great name. It really surprises me how many brewers are into running and exercise.

Now, on to your post. I would say give it a least 5 batches and you might be on to something...I don't use the tablets, so I have no experience with them. But only one batch is pretty far from being clear results IMHO.

 

The manufacture recommendation is 1 tablet for 20 gallons when being used for chlorine and chloramine,

so yes, you were using too much.

 

Yeah that was way, way too much. My water has chloramine. I use 1/4 tablet per the directions and it works great.

 

My tap water has chloramine, I don't use anything to treat it and have never had any issues.

 

Wouldn't it just get boiled off when you boiled the wort?

 

that depends on the manufacturer (how many mgs are your tablets) and your water content. The product I buy is 1 tablet per gallon (reduces by 30 ppm) and the water I work with has chlorine and chloramine at about 1.19 mg/l.

 

No. Not to rehash this debate again, but chlorine boils off with a short half-life. Chloramine has a much longer half life. It doesn't take much chloramine to get bandaid flavor. A jar of Campden tabs is like $4 which is enough for hundreds of batches.

 

Crosby & Baker 2 ounce tablets