water testing w/ campden tablet

[bufordsbest]

Hey guys,

I'm about to send in a sample of my tap water to ward labs for the brewers test. I'm not sure if my town treats the water with chlorine or chloramine but in the past i've just added 1/4 campden tablet to each 5 gallons of brewing liquor.

i was reading in a past byo article (http://byo.com/stories/issue/item/472-clearing-chloramine--historical-hopping-mr-wizard) that the campden tablet actually coverts chlorine to chloride and sulfide to sulfate.

this got me to thinking, should i add run off 5 gallons of tap water, add the campden tablet and send that sample or are changes in mineral composition from the tablet small enough that just the straight tap water should do?

thanks for any help,

tg

[mabrungard]

Yes, Campden (aka: metabisulfite) does convert those compounds into their more innocuous forms. However, the amount of sulfate or chloride added to the water is on the order of a couple ppm if the water has a typical chlorine or chloramine content of around 3 ppm. This change is not enough to worry about. You can ignore the Campden addition in the sample sent to the lab.

[bufordsbest]

thanks Martin, i've taken a sample and shipped off to wardlabs.

cheers,

tg