Filtered water

I’ve heard some people talk about the fact that the chlorine or chloramine added to drinking water can be detected in beer. It’s not something I’ve noticed myself, but in the spirit of trying to make the best beer possible, I’ve been giving it some thought.

Traditionally water companies use chlorine to kill bacteria in drinking water. Some people can smell this in the water. For this reason some companies are switching to adding chloramine. This has the same anti-bacterial effect, but cannot be tasted or smelt in the water. But it does, apparently, react with the beer itself to produce off-flavours in the finished beer. It’s also harder to get rid of.

Chlorine can be removed by boiling the water. Well wort gets boiled so that ought to cover it. Chloramine cannot be removed through boiling. It has to be removed by charcoal filtering the water, or using a campden tablet.

Since I have a water filter in my fridge, I have filtered the water we used in the last three brews. See the photo below for the ingenious method we used for making the filtering process a bit easier.

But having said all that, I am starting to feel that this is solving a problem that we don’t have. I’ve checked on our local water company web site, and the implication is that they still use chlorine, not chloramine. And whilst we have been working very hard to identify the cause of “that homebrew taste” (note to self: must do another post on this soon), I am coming to the conclusion that chlorine or chloramine isn’t it. But you have to consider these things!