My municipal water is treated with chloramine. I boil my mash / sparge water for 10 minutes to remove it, then I let the water cool to my strike temp. Since boiling water removes dissolved oxygen, I was wondering if this was bad for the mash chemistry. Should I oxygenate my water before mashing? I know I could use campden tablets to remove chloramine but they also add sulfate which I am trying to avoid. Just wondering if anyone had an opinion on this. Thanks
Just curious why are sulfates a problem? As far as I know using Campden tablets will add negligable amounts. I dont think it would be any more of a problem than what might already be present in your water.
I thought boiling removed chlorine but not chloramine. Is that incorrect?
And campden would add sulfites, not sulfate IIRC.
That’s my thought as well, but according to the SF PUC it can be removed with 20 minutes of gentle boiling. I know people that brew all grain with water treated with chloramine. Their beers are ultra phenolic.
And they don’t really do that either, AFAIK.
Correct. Brungard and AJ have posted on this many times. Basically if your water supplier treats with chloramine (and more and more do), then boiling is not effective.
https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=11392.msg142640#msg142640
Thanks for all the input. Sounds like campden tablets are the way to go.
That is my understanding as well. Need to use Campden or carbon filtration to get the chloramines out, to prevent Band-Aid flavors in the final beer.
Yes, Campden tablets (metabisulfite salt) do add sulfate to your water. However considering the typically low dosing of that compound, you are only added a couple ppm sulfate to the water. So it shouldn’t be a concern. PS: they also add a couple ppm of chloride too! Read the Water Knowledge page on the Bru’n Water website to understand the reactions with metabisulfite and daughter products.
AJ and I say that boiling for chloramine removal is ineffective…but only in the fact that it takes a LOT of energy to drive off chloramine. It works, but its not a good use of your time or resources. Chloramine is far less volatile than chlorine gas and it is harder to drive out of the water. Given the ease with which metabisulfite can remove chloramine and the fact that it DOES NOT result in any residual sulfite in your beer, you would be wise to employ that treatment in most cases.
Good info, Martin.
I don’t think Band Aids smell like they used to anymore. I was helping a guy out with a chlorine issue and he said Band Aids don’t have a smell and sure as heck I raided the medicine cabinet and alas, no smell or at least nothing like the days when they came in the metal tins. (I am 43) Then he asked how I knew what they TASTED like and it was awkward… ;D
I agree. I tried to find a better comparison, but when I poured myself a taster of Chloraseptic they kicked me out of Walgreen’s [emoji6]
The politically correct term these days is probably “medicine cabinet” or “hospital sanitizer”. After all, “Band-Aid” is a Registered trademark anyway, similar to Kleenex, Xerox, Google, iPhone, Trivago, Hupy & Abraham (does anyone actually use Trivago or Hupy & Abraham?!?), etc.
Thanks for making me smarter…again!
Thanks for cleaning up my poor paraphrase. As we’re all keenly aware just after tax day – ineffective and inefficient are not exactly the same thing 
A lot of them are fabric these days anyway, so don’t have the same chemical/plastic smell they used to.
I struggled with chlorine awhile when I first started. Back then, Charlie didn’t really get into that detail and no web forums… I was fortunate the LHBS guy knew his stuff. I still remember tasting the results of my first carbon filtered homebrew vividly. Incidently, my beers didn’t not display the typical band aid/medicinal off flavor. It was kinda a faint smoky, stale type flavor and I think that made it harder to diagnose.
I don’t always get bandaid, but I know what it is immediately when I taste it.
And I think over the last 20 years, a significant percentage of large water treatment plants have changed from using chlorine to using chloramine. In the chlorine days, leaving the water sitting for a little while, pouring between vessels and heating and/or boiling probably took care of a large part of the issue. Add in a little filtering and you were home free.
Now it seems like most places use chloramine and if you’re not using Campden you have to be a lot more fastidious about how you deal with the chloramine or risk off flavors. I was able to detect significant chlorophenols in previous batches where I had used Campden in the mash/sparge water, but I had only filtered my 1L of starter wort which was then pitched into the batch. After tasting the starter wort and then tasting a subsequent starter where I used distilled water, it became clear to me that a little bit of chlorophenol goes a long way…