Water Problem, need help!

[cjmurphy87]

A couple friends and I are combining and scaling up our brewing operations in order to make some more interesting product (so far we've only made kit beers, which have turned our well as they are all that is available in a 3 hour drive). For the kit's we've just used RO water, but we know thats not optimal and don't want to mess around with adding minerals to water just yet.

The water here has chlorine and mono and di-chloramines added to it. From what we've been reading the chloarmines are not good for brewing, and difficult to get rid of. The tap water here has so much of these in it that it actually makes me quite ill if i drink it for long periods of time.

WE've been unable to come up with any way of dealing with the chloramines and are seriously considering just running lake water through a .5 micron carbon filter and brewing with that after boiling it.

My questions are:

-Aside from camden tablets is there any other way of dealing with chloramine?

-Does anyone see a problem with the lake water method?

 

[Arneba28]

Camden will not get rid of Chloramine. Chloramine cant even be boiled into sedimentation like chlorine can.

Get one of those faucet hook up filters for your sink. That filters enough but not everything.

I dont like the flavor that my local water adds around here. So I went in on a home RO system with my friend who used it for his super large coral salt water tank. Totally worth the investment.

 

[TipsyDragon]

i wouldn't use the lake water. you don't know whats in it. there could be worse things than chloramines in there. the carbon filter may or may not filter out these contaminants if there are even any in there in the first place.

unless you are going to do all grain brewing RO water is just fine. 1 camden tablet in up to 20 gallons of water is the easiest way to deal with chloramines. it works in seconds. boiling will work for normal chlorine.

 

[TipsyDragon]

Camden will not get rid of Chloramine.

your wrong. one of the uses of a camden tablet is to remove chloramine.

 

[Justibone]

Buying drinking water (not distilled!) or spring water from the store is also an option.

 

[TheMan]

Camden will not get rid of Chloramine.

Sorry Arneba, that's incorrect.

From the Wikipedia...Campden tablets (potassium or sodium metabisulphite) are a sulphur-based product that is used primarily in wine, cider and beer making to kill certain bacteria and to inhibit the growth of most wild yeast: this product is also used to eliminate both free chlorine, and the more stable form, chloramine, from water solutions (i.e., drinking water from municipal sources). Campden tablets allow the amateur brewer to easily measure small quantities of sodium metabisulphite, so it can be used to protect against wild yeast and bacteria without affecting flavour.

Getting rid of chlorine and chloramine is why a brewer would use campden tablets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campden_tablets

 

[Arneba28]

Sorry Arneba, that's incorrect.

Sorry, Thought I had read that it would not. I may have confused this with something else.

 

[cjmurphy87]

We will be doing all grain eventually, which is why we want to deal with this now while getting set up.

 

[TheMan]

I would just use the tap water and add a campden tablet. I put it in my strike and mash water while heating it and it disolves in minutes.

Arneba - Perhaps you were thinking that boiling doesn't get rid of it. Either way, no worries

 

[Nurmey]

There are filters that will remove chloramine but they are very expensive. What we do for our water is run it through an inexpensive inline water filter AND use campden tablets. It's the only way that I can use tap water here in Omaha.

We bought the filter and the potable water hose in the RV section of Walmart. The trick with inline filters is to run the water VERY slowly through the filter. After we get a couple buckets of filtered water, we divide up a campden tablet and add it in. Within a half hour we have plenty of treated water to brew up an AG batch.

 

[smokinghole]

For my water issues (high chlorine) I use a .5micron charcoal filter and whole house housing. A few days before brewing I fill up my bottling bucket and another 7gal bucket with the filtered water and divide up a campden tablet evenly between the two and allow it to sit there and offgas/level off over a 1-2 day period. I use the potassium metabisulphite. The main reason I got to doing this was I made a smoked beer and read how chloramines can make a nasty taste when combined with smoke.

 

[cjmurphy87]

Sounds like thats the best method Nurmey. Now I just have to find somewhere that stocks the tabs. Thanks for the input everyone.

 

[thewurzel]

CHLORINE
Chlorine is used to sanitize domestic water systems. It is added either as free chlorine (FAC) or
as chlorine compounds that remain in the water.
Chlorine should be completely removed from brewing water. Chlorine present in the water,
whether FAC (free dissolved chlorine gas) or from compounds, will form chlorophenols upon
contact with organic matter (wort). Chlorophenols give a medicine-chest-like, phenolic flavor to
beer and are greatly undesired.
CHARCOAL FILTRATION is the best method of removing all the chlorine and chlorine
compounds in water. A simple tap-mounted unit is adequate.
Boiling will remove the FAC chlorine, but not chlorophenols.
Campden tablets can also be used 1 per 20 gallons of brewing water.