Tap water vs boiled vs bottled?

[Stauffbier]

If there are "chloramines" in the water, it won't boil off. What works, though, is setting out all of the water in a bucket and adding 1/4 crushed campden tablet per five gallons to it. Stir it well, and let it sit for a few minutes. That causes a chemical reaction and the chloramine goes away. Then the water can be used to top off with, to brew with, etc.

Can you filter out chloramine with a carbon filter?

 

[BigRob]

You can, but it's not as effective as it is at removing chlorine, which means you'd want to double-triple filter it. Dosing with Campden (metabisulfite) removes the chloramine almost instantly however.

 

[Stauffbier]

You can, but it's not as effective as it is at removing chlorine, which means you'd want to double-triple filter it. Dosing with Campden (metabisulfite) removes the chloramine almost instantly however.

Thanks. I'm not sure if my local water utility uses chloramine or not, but I'm ordering Campden tabs just to have them on hand. I'm going to try to understand my local water chemistry a little better, meanwhile...

 

[microbusbrewery]

I use dual carbon filters now, but when I first started doing extracts I always boiled my water first to drive off chlorine.

Here's a story that might help make you decide and will probably make you want to filter too. 20+ years ago when I was dating my wife, she got a glass of water from the kitchen sink and it looked oddly cloudy. We held it up to the light and could see what looked like tiny white fibers swirling around. She called the water company and they said they discovered some small worms in the system and that they'd added some extra chlorine to get them all out. They assured us they weren't parasitic or harmful in any way...just a little extra protein.