Should I worry about chloramines?

Chloramine can definitely affect the flavor of your homebrew if not filtered out. I'm not familiar with the carbon block filter from morebeer, but I will say that for $2.50 you can get a bottle of campden tablets that will remove chloramine from your tapwater and last you a long time.
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/campden-tablets-potassium-metabisulfite.html

 

I've used campden tablets for years, dosing is pretty easy, 1/4 tablet to 5 gallons of brewing water. Haven't had any off flavors or problems yet. As far as chlorine goes, I think it should evaporate out of the water as you heat it up to strike temperature. It's fairly volatile, which is why some places use chloramine, which stays in the water better. I don't filter my water, but we have very soft water here, so I can basically build a water profile up from scratch.

 

1 tablet is recommended for 20 gallons, so if you use a whole tablet for 5 gallons I suppose you could be risking some off flavors but I wouldn't worry too much about it. I use a pill cutter and cut it into 1/4ths, but when I started I would just use half a tablet and never noticed any negative affects. Also, only needing a quater of a tablet means a bottle lasts forever.

 

The amount involved is miniscule.It doesn't really taste and much of it is lost in the boil. It actually stabilises beer as it's a powerful antioxidant; in fact the only preservative allowed in alcoholic drinks.Wines might say "Contains sulphites" on the label; this is the same thing but in wine there's a lot more than 1 tablet in 20 gallons.

 

Don't grossly exceed the recommended dosage and you don't have to worry about it. Also, campden removes chlorine as well as chloramines. But it would be unusual to have both in the same water.

 

My comment was purely about Campden tablets!
I'm saying that Campden tablets are nothing to fear.Apart from removing chloramine any excess won't taste of anything but is very good at killing spoilage organisms but doesn't affect yeast.As well, as I mentioned, as being an excellent anti oxidant.

 

References? Sounds like the miracle chemical...have some sitting on my shelf.

 

Search hbd.org that is where I learned it is good to use in the mash as an anti-oxidant.

 

Anyone ever ignore the skull and crossbones on the label and put one on our tongue? WILDFIRE!

 

As mentioned earlier, it's a sulphite which is widely used in the wine trade for the same properties.
For many years it was the only substance (except household bleach) available for sterilisation of brewing equipment.It's in the no-rinse class for this.By the way, if you do use bleach for sanitising , Campden tablets completely remove all traces.
I never in fact used them as such as Sodium Metabisulphite is exactly the same chemical and is available in powder form, much cheaper than in tablets.

 

We have chloramines in our water here and there's plenty of good brewers that don't do any water treatment. Apparently they use a higher level some places than they do here. Does your water smell like chlorine? If it does, you definitely need to treat it. If you can't smell it, you may not need to treat it.

 

Well, the most powerful Jedi's have a high chloramine count, so there's that.

 

When I first messed with Mr Beer I got burned by chloramines (I didn't know they were present, and didn't use campden or filters). I discovered they were being used by looking up the local water report. Makes the beer taste like band-aids, and essentially undrinkable (at least at the levels where I used to live and the Mr Beer kits).

 

What is your personal method for removing chloramines from your tap water?

Cheers!

 

I've been using bottled water. I guess it would be campden tho.

Right now the water here has a strong medicinal smell which I don't know the source (could well be chlorine, chloramine, and/or flouride). I would rather just use spring water and not mess with the water at this time. I'll get to water in the future.