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I'm curious what effect (if any) chloramine-treated tap water has when used in small quantities, such as a yeast starter or when boiled with priming sugar to use a priming solution. My municipal water supply is treated with chloramine year-round, but to a lesser degree during the winter.

I'm brewing all-grain and have been struggling with some off flavors that I haven't been able to pin down. Generally I use bottled water for most situations, but for priming solutions I've just been boiling my tap water with the sugar. The beer tastes great out of the primary fermenter and at bottling time, but the off flavor pops up after the bottles have been carbed for a few weeks. Any chance the chloramine in the priming solution could be causing this?

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Chloramines or Chlorine will give your beer a medicinal or band-aid type of flavor. The chloramine reacts with phenols in the fermenting beer to create this off flavor. The easiest way to get rid of the chloramine is to run it through a block carbon filter. You could also use the Britta type filters but these don't work quite as well as the block carbon because they use granulated charcoal. You can also use potassium metabisulfite or campden tables, about a 1/2 oz will dechlorinate about 20 gallons of water. The boiling method will work to remove chlorine but is not very effective at removing it from water treated with chloramine. Here is a link to an article in Brew Your Own.

http://www.byo.com/stories/wizard/article/section/121-mr-wizard/475-clearing-chloramine-a-historical-hopping-mr-wizard

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  • Medicinal is about the best I can explain it. I wasn't aware campden tablets worked for this. I believe chloramine needs to be in contact with charcoal for a longer period of time than a Brita filter would normally provide in order to be removed, unless that's just an urban legend I've encountered.
    – excessiveparenthetical
    Nov 26, 2010 at 20:25
  • The britta filters are not the best option but they do remove some of the chloramine. If you needed just a small amount of water you could run it through a couple times to improve the results.
    – Northern Brewer Chris
    Nov 26, 2010 at 20:31
  • Campden tablets are your best bet for eliminating chloramine. A good block carbon filter will help, but unless you are filtering at a VERY slow flow rate (think 10 minutes per gallon), it will only be moderately effective at removing chloramine. That said, it certainly doesn't hurt, and I personally do both carbon filtering and campden tabs.
    – Paul Stauffer
    Dec 10, 2015 at 16:59
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Try a Berkey filter (or maybe a Pur, running it through more than once) http://www.trmplumbing.com/blog/chloramine/chloramine-filter-test-1

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