Dechlorinating City Water with Campden Tablets

[fakr]

One big brewing beef of mine is having to use city water that's full of chloramine, a chlorine type additive in city water which doesn't boil off like chlorine does.  You can really tell the difference with city vs well water in the finished product...

...Well, I recently started using Campden tablets to de chlorinate after reading multiple articles on use of campden tabs in beer and wine making.

1 campden tablet crushed up and added to 20GAL of water neutralizes chlorine and chloramine in mere minutes.  I've done this with my last 3-4 brews and notice an improvement in the finished product.

because of the really cheap price of campden tabs, I would strongly suggest you city brewers to add this to your brew day procedures.

Couple of references:

http://byo.com/american-amber-pale-ale/item/472-clearing-chloramine--historical-hopping-mr-wizard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campden_tablet

[DandyMason]

I agree completely, I've had off flavours in the past that may or may not have come from chlorine or chloramine... It's too easy not to toss a 1/2 tablet in

[Chris Craig]

Great tip guys!

[sdixon]

Just a note on Fredericton City water... they use Chlorine not Chloramine (ammonia + chlorine). Chlorine should evaporate off if left overnight without a lid.

[Evil Jalapeno]

Interesting, as I'm also brewing with Moncton's city water. I'm a little confused with dosage though. You say you use 1 tablet per 20 Gal, Wikipedia says 1 tablet per gallon, byo.com says 1/2 tablet per 20 gal and OBK says that "Each tablet adds 75 ppm free SO2 per gallon (pH dependent)". 

Also, is it possible to add too much sodium metabisulphate? If so, what are the results?

[fakr]

I've been using the 1 tab per 20 gallon rule and it works for me just fine.  I've read higher doses can be used in wines, meads, etc to kill off wild yeast from fruit before pitching cultured yeast.

If you're using sodium metabisulphate vs Potassium metabisulfite, too much would effectively add a quantity of potentially undesirable salt to your water. 

I'm not overly concerned with extra salt as 1 tab per 20GAL is a very small amount.

[Evil Jalapeno]

Cool, thanks!