Campden Tablets in RO Water

[Spartan1979]

I won BOS in a local homebrew competition and as a prize my German Pils is supposed to be brewed at a local brewery. I used RO water in my beer with only a little bit of calcium chloride and gypsum added. Unfortunately, the brewery doesn't use RO water and this has become a stumbling block.

I could bring my system down to the brewery but it would take 3 days to gather enough water. A local municipality makes RO water, but they are required to chlorinate the water before they can release any of it. If we added one Campden tablet to each 20 gallons of RO, what water profile would the resulting water have?

Thanks.

 

[Weezy]

If your local brewery can't deal with water profile requirements (not surprised), I'd tell them to go pound salt. Good beer ain't cheap; cheap beer ain't good.

 

[schematix]

Do you have any idea about the quality of their water? Maybe their source is very soft and doesn't need RO???

I notice you're also local to me, so i doubt that's the case. Are they really using tap water for their beer? Who is it?

 

[timdillon36]

If it was me I would talk the brewery into doing 2 test batches, one with their water and one with the municipal RO water. Chlorine is easy to remove, it can be as easy as filling the BK the night before and then heat that in the morning.

Just ask anyone that has a pool or hot tub what it takes to keep chlorine in the water.

 

[dmtaylor]

It's not a stumbling block. Just use their water. I'll bet anyone can barely taste a difference. Imagine putting it through a Brulosophy blind triangle -- ha!

 

[dyqik]

Per the Campden tablet sticky, removing each mg of chlorine with metabisulphite adds 0.55 mg of potassium, 1.35 mg of sulfate and 1.0 mg of chloride.

Since the chlorination level is, I think, typically 2mg/l, you're only adding ~3 mg/l of sulfate and 2 mg/l of chloride by using Campden tablets at the minimum level required. The typical addition of 1 per 20 gallons is sufficient to treat 3mg/l of chlorine, so the levels added might be a bit higher, but not much.

 

[mabrungard]

G Pils can have a bit of mineralization, so it may not be the end of the world to use tap water. The main concern is to get the mash pH down below about 5.3 so the beer is crisp. You have to know what's in the water to figure that out.

 

[Spartan1979]

Do you have any idea about the quality of their water? Maybe their source is very soft and doesn't need RO???

I notice you're also local to me, so i doubt that's the case. Are they really using tap water for their beer? Who is it?

I don't know of any local breweries that are using RO water. AFAIK all of them are using municipal water supplies. Most are probably filtering the water. But that doesn't remove any ions.

 

[TexasWine]

I won BOS in a local homebrew competition and as a prize my German Pils is supposed to be brewed at a local brewery. I used RO water in my beer with only a little bit of calcium chloride and gypsum added. Unfortunately, the brewery doesn't use RO water and this has become a stumbling block.

I could bring my system down to the brewery but it would take 3 days to gather enough water. A local municipality makes RO water, but they are required to chlorinate the water before they can release any of it. If we added one Campden tablet to each 20 gallons of RO, what water profile would the resulting water have?

Thanks.

I was in a similar situation this past year. I use RO, the brewery making my beer use filtered municipal water. But we rolled with it.

The reason it didn't really bother me? These folks brew a variety of styles with this water and knew what was needed to get the right pH and profile to hit style. I deferred to their expertise with their system, which I think is warranted in a situation like this. They brew all day, every day, and their success was at least some solace that hopefully they know what they're doing. Well, success and the fact that the head brewer was literally a former rocket scientist.

The beer ended up being a touch darker than my homebrewed version, tasted slightly different, but it was a darn good beer nonetheless.

 

[Shwagger]

Per the Campden tablet sticky, removing each mg of chlorine with metabisulphite adds 0.55 mg of potassium, 1.35 mg of sulfate and 1.0 mg of chloride.

Since the chlorination level is, I think, typically 2mg/l, you're only adding ~3 mg/l of sulfate and 2 mg/l of chloride by using Campden tablets at the minimum level required. The typical addition of 1 per 20 gallons is sufficient to treat 3mg/l of chlorine, so the levels added might be a bit higher, but not much.

Bringing this up as I have plastic taste in my store nought RO water after bottling and want to try a campden to fix. Are these numbers accurate? I will need to adjust my Brunwater if so

 

[mabrungard]

RO water shouldn't have any chlorine compounds in it since those compounds need to be fully removed from the raw water prior to it encountering the RO membrane. Those compounds destroy the membrane.

I don't believe that a campden tablet addition will correct the plastic taste in your RO water. Have you tried another container or another store?

 

[Shwagger]

RO water shouldn't have any chlorine compounds in it since those compounds need to be fully removed from the raw water prior to it encountering the RO membrane. Those compounds destroy the membrane.

I don't believe that a campden tablet addition will correct the plastic taste in your RO water. Have you tried another container or another store?

I will this weekend from a different machine. But i wanted to be extra sure there was no chlorine or chloramines, hence the tablet. Brewing isn't cheap these days. Wasted batches make me upset

If it's not the water, I don't know what else it could be. The only constants are equipment, water, and location of brewing. 2 separate batches of different styles, 4 months apart, had plastic taste

 

[ajdelange]

The main concern is to get the mash pH down below about 5.3 so the beer is crisp. You have to know what's in the water to figure that out.

In fact, you don't. Simply acidify their water to the desired mash pH. 5.4 is fine for a nice crisp Pils but if you prefer 5.3 or 5.5 shoot for those. Now using that water make a test mash with 2% sauermalz. If its pH is not right, adjust the sauermalz percentage. Repeat until you get the pH you like. Bob's your uncle.

Now if you want to know explicitly what the alkalinity of the water is take note of the amount of acid it took to get your sample to your target pH. This means using acid of known strength and applying it to a known volume of water. 88% lactic acid is about 11.4 N meaning that each cc delivers 11.4 mEq of acid. You will probably want to dilute it so that each cc delivers 1.14 mEq. To do this measure out 1 cc of the 88% acid and add DI water to it until you have 10 cc. Obviously laboratory cylinders are perfect for this but a 10 cc syringe is fine too. Simply adding 1 vol of the concentrate to 9 vol of water is not quite as accurate but as we only want a rough estimate anyway that's plenty adequate. Test 1 L of water. Then the alkalinity is 1.1*mL in which mL is the number of mL of the acid dilution used to reach target pH. If the alkalinity is between 1 and 2 mEq/L (it took 1 - 2 mL of the diluted acid) then you are fine. If it takes more than 2 mL acid then you will want to consider the RO option. Multiply the cc of acid used by 50 for alkalinity in ppm as CaCO3.

 

[ajdelange]

I won BOS in a local homebrew competition

Congratulations!

If we added one Campden tablet to each 20 gallons of RO, what water profile would the resulting water have?

That depends on how much chlorine or chloramine they have added. There is a table attached to the post at https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/campden-tablets-sulfites-and-brewing-water.361073/ which you might not have noticed as you have to click on it to expand it. From it you can figure out the amounts of the byproducts per mg chlorine or chloramine removed. The byproduct concentrations are very low, none are detrimental and some are beneficial. Any excess metabite will reduce something (beneficial) or escape as SO2 gas.

It's not probable they are adding chloramine but you can determine whether they are or not by means of the simple sniff test. If they are using chlorine alone a stand overnight is usually sufficient to remove it. For large volumes aerating it is a good idea and aerating it while warm works even better.