substatute for campden tablets

[Arbe0]

Instead of campden tablets you can use either potassium metabisulfate or Sodium metabisulfate at a dose of .025 grams per gallon. I was just wondering how many of you do this and which do you use Potassium or the sodium metaisulfate? Using one of these is cheaper and more accurate.

 

[VikeMan]

I have both types of metabisulfite powders on hand (for other reasons), but on the rare occasion that I use tap water and need to eliminate chloramines, I just use a campden tablet. It's handy and easy.

What do you mean by more accurate?

 

[RPh_Guy]

+1 the tablets are much easier to use than powder, and safer for anyone out there with asthma. I wouldn't call metabisulfite powder a "substatute" for metabisulfite tablets, but rather just another form of the same product.

I assume you're suggesting that splitting an (unscored) tablet leads to a mildly variable amount of metabisulfite amount being used. That is true, but ultimately irrelevant. With typical usage of the Campden tablets, there's more than enough sulfite present to neutralize the active chlorine compounds, and any residual sulfite is removed during brewing (converted to sulfate via oxidation).

Cheers

 

[VikeMan]

I assume you're suggesting that splitting an (unscored) tablet leads to a mildly variable amount of metabisulfite amount being used.

Not to mention that the exact amount of Meta really needed would depend on the exact amount of chorine/choramines in the water, which is unknowable unless you're going to test before each brew.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

Using one of these is cheaper and more accurate.

I would not worry much about cost here. A bag of 100 Campden tablets is $5 at my local store. Using 1/2 tablet per 5 gallon batch means with your $5 investment you can brew a 5 gallon batch every week for 3.8 years at $0.025 per batch. Campden tablets are sold in both Potassium or the Sodium metabisulfite version.

I did pick up a bag of Potassium Metabisulfite thinking it would be easier to measure for small batches (I sometimes make 1 gallon batches). I found out that my cheap jeweler's scale will really not measure out 0.035 grams (even if the display shows 3 decimal points).