What to do with chlorinated water?

With the announcement of Christchurch’s pending plan to chlorinate the water, we have been inundated at the shop with questions on how to remove this. This is a widely common issue elsewhere in the country but new to the brewers here in the garden city. I have heard many people say to just leave it and it doesn’t really have an effect but it can leave some odd metallic flavours. Removal of the water treatment is fairly simple and here are the options:

1. Activated Carbon Filter: This is a good option if you have a bit of spare cash laying around and you want to have filtered drinking water more than just for brewing. The flow rate can be tiresome and the filter will need replacing every so often but it is easy to use and fresh water is basically on tap.
2. Boil the water before use: This is an easy option and the only cost is the energy source to boil the water. The time it takes to boil the water though can sometimes be an issue and this would add an hour to 2 hours onto every brew day.
3. Campden tablets: Campden (Sodium Metabisulfite) is another cheap and easy to use way to remove the chlorine. 1 tablet will treat up to 100 liters of water which for a standard brew will be far more than you would need. All you need to do is dissolve the tablet into the water and wait 10 minutes and you will have usable water.
4. Leave the water over night: The easiest solution is to leave your water in a pot with no lid on and the chlorine will do the work for  you. Left in the open the chlorine will dissipate leaving you with the untreated water that you desire. The best part about this option is that it is free. The down side of this is that you will need to plan your brewing in advance to make sure you have your water ready.

With 4 options to choose from there isn’t any reason to fear chlorine and you can feel easy that you can be prepared to have chlorine free water on your brew day!

HOT TIP: Don’t forget to prepare your sparge water as well.