Campden Tablets

[Newts]

Hey guys,

Did a brew this afternoon and had to try something different. Can anyone fill me in on how campden tablets are supposed to be used?

I was doing a full extract brew and due to water quality where I am I have to boil all my water before it goes into a brew. I boiled up 15L yesterday so it was at a decent temp to be used today but I had someone rock around that wanted to try putting a kit brew together. Thinking I'd do the right thing and teach him I ran out of the pre-boiled water as his ginger beer kit used it all. I thought I may as well have a go at using the campden tablets I brought from my LHBS as our local water is riddled with chlorine.

I put 15L of water into a pot and added 1/4 of a tablet as per Palmers book. The problem I had was that it didn't dissolve well in cold water and now I'm thinking I should have dissolved it first in warm/hot water before I added it. Question is will it do the same job in cold water? I crushed it and gave it a really good stir after it didn't dissolve. Hope I haven't stuffed a good batch of extract beer for a cooper ginger kit!

Cheers,

Newts

 

[HBHB]

They do certainly dissolve better in warm water, but if crushed, they won't take long to dissolve all the same.

Don't stress it, but 1/4 Tablet for 15 Litres is a fair bit more than required - 1 tablet will efficiently remove fairly high chlorine levels from about 100L of water. It won't hurt.

I use about a half tablet in a 50L batch of strike water and let it sit overnight. However, the process really only takes a few minutes to do the job

Martin