New to water analysis.

With all grain brewing what effect does chlorine have on the mash?  My level is 0.47 and I do not h ave a problem with taste or smell, but concerned with sugar extraction in the mash.  Should i use a Campden tablet?

Campden tablets are used in wine making. They put sulfur dioxide into the solution which is toxic to wild yeast, but cultivated yeast can handle it. Hence the ubiquitous "Contains Sulfites" warning on wine bottles.

I consulted Papazian's Joy of Homebrewing and he says that if your water tastes good, use it.  If the city chlorinates it to the point where it's nasty, he suggests using a charcoal filter or boiling it before use.

Since you say it tastes OK, I wouldn't worry about it.

Because it doesn't effect the taste at its current level I'm not going to treat it. But after studying my water report it seems my Ca (22ppm) and Sulfate (3ppm) levels where low. So according to EZWater I'm going to add a total of 5.1g gypsum and 5.1g calc chloride to raise 103ppm and 94ppm respectively. It will also bring my room temp ph down from 5.8 to 5.65.

Secondly my chlorine level is 0.5 ppm.  Will this damage my yeast?  Even though the yeast goes in after boil?

To answer your first question, no, chlorine levels in your water will not affect your sugar extraction.  The lack of Calcium ~22ppm most likely would affect your sugar extraction because outside of helping to regulate mash pH, Calcium also aids in stabilizing the enzymes that are at work in the mash.  It is also responsible for helping in many other "good" reactions including helping with hot and cold break in the boil, and increasing your hop utilization.  Cheers to your addition of calcium salts.

To answer your second question, I don't think that you need to worry about chlorine damaging your yeast, especially at the levels that you describe.  There is a much bigger problem to having chlorine and/or chloramine in your brewing water.  Namely they bind with phenols during the brewing process and produce chemical compounds known as chlorophenols.  These things have a weird medicinal or "band-aid" flavor and aroma.

If you only have chlorine in your water, you can remove it by simply boiling the water before use, or leaving it out in the open overnight.  If you have chloramine then these methods will not work.

I have had very good luck in using a charcoal filter to remove chlorine and chloramines from my brewing water.  There are different grades of filters out there, I use one connected to my fridge for drinking water.

I have also used Campden tablets as well with good results, but I can no longer use them because they release sulfites which are later turned in to sulfates which my water already has too much of. 

The normal usage of Campden tablets for brewing water is 1 tablet per 20 gals of water.  Keep this in mind since it is much lower than the 1 tablet per gallon of wine.  Crush it up and put it in the water.  The reaction will occur almost immediately and you will get a good whiff of sulfur.  I always waited a few hours for the smell of sulfur to calm down before I brewed, but many people have had good luck with brewing right away.

GoodisBeer said:

Because it doesn't effect the taste at its current level I'm not going to treat it. But after studying my water report it seems my Ca (22ppm) and Sulfate (3ppm) levels where low. So according to EZWater I'm going to add a total of 5.1g gypsum and 5.1g calc chloride to raise 103ppm and 94ppm respectively. It will also bring my room temp ph down from 5.8 to 5.65.

Secondly my chlorine level is 0.5 ppm.  Will this damage my yeast?  Even though the yeast goes in after boil?

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+1 to Campden tabs.  Easier/cheaper than filters. 

5 grams each of gypsum and calc chloride seems high for just the mash water.  Are you treating all the brewing water the same way? 

Palmer favors adjusting the pH of the mash since that is where conversion happens.  Post mash, as long as the boil has enough calcium, and the yeast get their calcium and magnesium, you should be fine. 

The gypsum and calc chloride also compete with each other on the Chloride:Sulfate ratio if you're trying to enhance either malty (Scottish) or hoppy (IPA) styles. 

Some notes:

1.  Standard Activated charcoal filters will NOT remove chloramines.  Even for filters of the right type, the recommended contact time of the water with the charcoal is a minimum of 45s.  That is a pretty slow delivery rate.  Even THEN, the filter will only remove the chlorine half of the molecule, and will not remove amonia half.  So, now you have amonia in your water.  I don't know if amonia at that concentration will have an effect or not. 

The size of carbon filter required to filter choramines from water at a rate of 1 gallons per minute is 110 lbs.

http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/content/14/11/2579.full

2.  Camden tables come in two different chemical forms: Sodium bisulfite, and Potasium-Metabisulfite.  Each form will leave the cation in solution after the sulfite has done its thing.  Thus, you will end up with either Sodium or Potassium in your beer.  Potasium is flavor neutral at these concentrations, but sodium is definately NOT.  Be sure you are buying POTASSIUM Meta-Bisulfite (POTMETA).  You can buy this in granular form rather than tablet form, as well.  then you can dose by the gram instead of fractions of a tablet.

3.  Ascorbic acid can also be used to remove chloramines.  1000 mg tablet of vitamin C treats 40 gallons of water.  So, a quarter tablet would treat 10 gallons of water.  NOTE: the half-life is 4 minutes.  So, for each 4 minutes that it sits, half of the remaining chloramines will be eliminated.  So, you need to let it sit for 20 minutes or so to have removed most of the chloramine.  That's only 8ppm, so its pretty safe for brew flavor.  Plus, its a lot easier to find (you can get it at the grocery or drug store), than POTMETA. 

So now I just pre-boil my water. On another note, I used ezwater calculator and made some adjustments to my water. I'll be adding some calcium chloride and gypsum.  Where do I add these? Before pre-boil of brewing water, after,  or in with the mash?

I use a pyrex measuring cup and boil some dechlorinated water and premix the chemicals and them to the mash water as I wait for the MLT to drop down to the strike temp target.  If I am doing mash hops, I then add those, so they end up stewing at ~160F for a bit and break up well.  Both are well mixed before adding grains.

I add the salts directly to my dry bag of grain.  As I dough in they are mixed with everything else. Some sales need the mash chemistry to dissolved. So, that's what I do.

I use 1 Camden tablet per 5 gallon batch to reduce the effects of my chloride. I use this for every batch regardless.

Thanks for the advice...i'll probably add the chemicals to the grain and just dough in...this sounds the easiest. My water report indicates that i have chlorine in my water so i just pre-boil the water now. Thanks all...always learning!




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