Campden Tablets - Why Not More About Them?

[Gytaryst]

Here's how the Wikipedia article on Campden Tablets starts out:

Campden tablets (potassium or sodium metabisulfite) are a sulfur-based product that is used primarily to sterilize wine, cider and in beer making to kill bacteria and to inhibit the growth of most wild yeast: this product is also used to eliminate both free chlorine and the more stable form, chloramine, from water solutions (e.g., drinking water from municipal sources).

It seems like [killing] bacteria and [inhibiting] the growth of most wild yeast is one of the top objectives in home brewing, but when you search to find out the different methods others are using to accomplish this you almost never hear anyone mention campden tablets. Heat pasteurizing is big, soaking in Star San seems popular, and I've even read where guys soak fruit and other ingredients in a mild bleach solution to sanitize it. You hear about campden tablets being are used to "... eliminate both free chlorine and the more stable form, chloramine, from water solutions." I couldn't help wonder if these were the same guys soaking ingredients in bleach? You do occasionally run across a few comments about using campden tablets to sanitize things before adding them to fermentation, but they're few and far between, they seem to be outdated, and a lot of what is being said isn't factual.

Just an observation. I'm getting ready to brew a beer that will have fruit and chocolate added after primary fermentation is complete, so I was surfing around for ideas. Most of what I feel is trustworthy info I've read on non beer brewing related sites. What little bit I have found on home brewing sites doesn't always coincide with what I've read elsewhere.

I'm not a science guy so I was just curious if there are reasons I'm missing? Some guys heat fruit up to 170 degrees and hold it for 30 minutes, some guys zap stuff in the microwave, some soak stuff in vodka for a couple weeks and either separate it out or throw vodka and all into the fermenter, and still others just throw everything in the way it is, cross their fingers, and hope the alcohol in the beer will kill off any infection causing bugs. I'm sure all of those methods work to one degree or another, but with certain drawbacks. I'm not saying campden tablets don't have drawbacks - it just seems to me that these things were designed specifically for this purpose so I find it curious that it's not discussed more?

 

[Mainer]

I dunno. I see people around here talking up campden all the time. I'd go so far as to guess *most* brewers who use city water treat it with campden before mashing. I could be wrong. YMMV.

 

[thehaze]

I do not use Campden tablets as I do not use tap water. I use bottled water.

If I had the possiblity to get RO water, I would, but since that's not an option, bottled water is the safest choice.

Tap water, if not tested, would be a total guess work when brewing.

 

[njohnsoncs]

I started using campden to treat my tap water since it is high in chlorine and chloramines but an added bonus is that it sterilizes the water. So I treat 5.5 gallons of water, use about 3.5 for my partial mash then use the remaining to top off without having to worry about bacteria in the top off water.

 

[Morrey]

I dunno. I see people around here talking up campden all the time. I'd go so far as to guess *most* brewers who use city water treat it with campden before mashing. I could be wrong. YMMV.

Absolutely. Municipal water systems often use chlorine/chloramine, so campden is a water addition I include with my brewing salts and acid adjustments. It dissipates quickly after doing its job, and is good insurance against off flavors.

 

[Mainer]

I do not use Campden tablets as I do not use tap water. I use bottled water.

If I had the possiblity to get RO water, I would, but since that's not an option, bottled water is the safest choice.

Tap water, if not tested, would be a total guess work when brewing.

I use city water, and in most batches, I don't treat at all. My city has exceptionally good city water. https://www.pwd.org/sites/default/files/annual-water-quality-report-2016_0.pdf

 

[Morrey]

Tap water, if not tested, would be a total guess work when brewing.

You are indeed correct! I sent a sample of municipal water to Ward Labs (or a report as Mainer uses) to do a brewing specific water analysis. The report is important, since as you said, you have virtually no clue what the water contains until analyzed.

 

[mongoose33]

I do not use Campden tablets as I do not use tap water. I use bottled water.

If I had the possiblity to get RO water, I would, but since that's not an option, bottled water is the safest choice.

Tap water, if not tested, would be a total guess work when brewing.

Depending on what you're paying for bottled water and how often you brew, it may make financial sense to get a RO system. It doesn't have to be permanently installed--mine isn't.

I bought this one from Buckeye Hydro....IIRC it was about $130 or so. I also added a Total Dissolved Solids meter for a total that ended up around $170. (EDITED TO ADD: I just checked back and here's the post that details what I paid; total $187 including shipping. So if you delete the TDS meter, it's paid for. If you don't, I still have a couple brews to go. )

I use a 7-gallon aquatainer to store the water. My normal brew day involves filling the kettle with water from this, starting it to heat, then immediately starting the aquatainer filling again. Takes about 3-4 hours to fill it, then it's ready for the next brew day.

That unit just hangs on the wall in my garage; I did it that way so I could bring it into the warm house if necessary during a cold snap. Never had to to it. I'm finally, after more than a year of doing it this way, getting it directly connected to the water supply so I can use the sink for other things while making RO water.

I checked back in my notes; I've done 29 batches with this system, and at $6/batch buying RO water, it has now paid for itself. BTW, and I never made this connection until now....that sixth batch, the first using my own RO water, was the first one that I brewed where I tasted it and said "Wow!"

As long as you have a faucet that can accommodate a screw-on adapter, this would work in an apartment setup, house, whatever.

 

[flars]

Campden tablets are used more often in wine making. Chlorine/chloramine removal is an added benefit for brewers.

 

[Lefou]

Many of us never bother with Campden tablets for water treatment. I don't.
Even though it may be more convenient and cheaper to use home tap water, I'll usually use store-bought spring water. It's "soft" and lower pH than my tap water, so it's easier to manage for me on brew days. Second, a couple sanitized frozen gallon jugs of water make a great heat sink when you cool wort. Afterwards they're used to top off. Keeps me from wasting water with an immersion coil.

Some people get Campden and potassium sorbate mixed up. Campden and potassium sorbate are useful but for different applications.

 

[tiredofbuyingbeer]

Won't campden also kill brewer's yeast? If that's the case, its application for sanitizing purposes is going to be limited to using it in lieu of boiling, before you pitch yeast. Obviously, the chloramine removal is important.

I don't get why potassium metabisulfite has to come in tablet form. We don't use gypsum tablets or calcisum chloride tablets. Why not just measure out how much you need like everything else?

 

[Gytaryst]

This kind of makes my point. I started off quoting the Wikipedia article which basically makes two points:

Point 1. Campden tablets (potassium or sodium metabisulfite) are a sulfur-based product that is used [primarily] to sterilize wine, cider and in beer making to kill bacteria and to inhibit the growth of most wild yeast:

Point 2.... this product is [also] used to eliminate both free chlorine and the more stable form, chloramine, from water solutions... etc, etc, etc.

Point 2 almost seems like an afterthought. I found it interesting and curious that the only time campden tablets are discussed in home brewing circles, is in regard to treating chlorine. The responses I got were:

I dunno. I see people around here talking up campden all the time. I'd go so far as to guess *most* brewers who use city water treat it with campden before mashing. I could be wrong. YMMV.

I do not use Campden tablets as I do not use tap water. I use bottled water.

I started using campden to treat my tap water since it is high in chlorine and chloramines but an added bonus is that it sterilizes the water.

Absolutely. Municipal water systems often use chlorine/chloramine, so campden is a water addition I include with my brewing salts and acid adjustments.

I use city water, and in most batches, I don't treat at all. My city has exceptionally good city water.

... Chlorine/chloramine removal is an added benefit for brewers.

Many of us never bother with Campden tablets for water treatment. I don't.
Even though it may be more convenient and cheaper to use home tap water, I'll usually use store-bought spring water.

I was posting this mainly in reference to point 1 of that Wikipedia article, "... is used primarily to sterilize wine, cider and in beer making to kill bacteria and to inhibit the growth of most wild yeast:"

That said - I too used campden tablets to treat my tap water for years. I sent a sample off to Ward labs, entered the results in the Bru N' Water spreadsheet, and that was where I began every water profile for every beer I brewed. Then I read that municipal water chemistry can be significantly different from one month to the next, and can be drastically different within a year. So without sending in a new sample every month that process was really little more than guessing.

I switched and now start every brew off with 100% R/O water and adjust from there. I'm planning a chocolate raspberry stout and I don't normally brew with fruit or adjunct ingredients added after fermentation for flavor, so I decided to avail myself of the experience on this site and educate myself on the best methods others have used. That's when I realized using campden tablets to "kill bacteria and wild yeast" doesn't get discussed much in home brew circles. People have all kinds of weird techniques to sanitize ingredients prior to throwing them in the secondary; some sound like they might work, some sound . . . misguided. ampden tablets were actually designed with that in mind, and yet it doesn't seem to be a very popular choice in home brewing.

That campden tablets, (which were created for this purpose), are not really discussed among home brewers I found interesting. I was curious if there's something I'm missing?

 

[Mainer]

That's when I realized using campden tablets to "kill bacteria and wild yeast" doesn't get discussed much in home brew circles. People have all kinds of weird techniques to sanitize ingredients prior to throwing them in the secondary; some sound like they might work, some sound . . . misguided. ampden tablets were actually designed with that in mind, and yet it doesn't seem to be a very popular choice in home brewing.

That campden tablets, (which were created for this purpose), are not really discussed among home brewers I found interesting. I was curious if there's something I'm missing?

I think the reason you don't see them used more often for that purpose is that campden kills off cultivated yeast (your deliberate pitch) in addition to wild yeast. So you can use them pre-boil to neutralize chlorine, but using them pre-boil is sort of moot, as the boil will achieve the same goal. Using them post-fermentation is likewise moot, since any wild yeast/bacterial off-flavors will have already been imparted. At what point in the brewing process would you propose using campden where it will neither duplicate the effect of the boil nor kill your yeast pitch?

 

[Mainer]

Oh, wait. You're talking about using them to sterilize fruit and other secondary additions? Yeah, I think I've heard of that. But I think most people prefer using alcohol because gin, bourbon, and rum can all be used to impart additional complexity to the beer. That's my reason, anyway, for preferring alcohol as a sanitizing medium.

 

[flars]

Check the response by @dmtaylor for sanitizing fruit additions.
https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=29827.0

 

[Lefou]

I don't usually use fruit in my beer so that's why my answer skewed to water treatment.

 

[MSK_Chess]

If you have relatively soft water a deionised system is probably more cost effective than an RO system. RO system are only really necessary if you live in an area with hard water. For a DI system all you need is a filter housing and some resin like Tulson MB-115. A 25KG bag will last the home brewer forever. It also gives you deionised water on demand.

 

[Gytaryst]

I think the reason you don't see them used more often for that purpose is that campden kills off cultivated yeast (your deliberate pitch) in addition to wild yeast.

Not exactly.
When you treat ingredients with campden tablets you let it sit 24 hours loosely covered. It does kill off the bacteria and wild yeast, but it dissipates. Wine making forums are bombarded with posts warning newbies not to use campden tablets to "stop fermentation."

I've read where a lot of home brewers choose to freeze their fruit to kill off bacteria and wild yeast. Freezing causes the bacteria, bugs and wild yeast to fall alseep in a dormant state. When you pitch it into your secondary and it thaws out - guess what.

It was really just an observation more than a question. Because there's almost no "home brew talk" about using campden tablets to sanitize fruit additions, I wondered if there was something I was missing.

The way to get the most out of adding fruit would be to throw it into secondary fresh and raw. But then you're throwing in a lot of unwanted potentially infection causing stuff with it. If you have a relatively high gravity beer the alcohol will sanitize things (to a certain extent). But it has to be a substantially high abv to have any worthwhile "sanitizing" properties. 9 times out of 10 you can throw fresh fruit in and not have an issue - especially if you drink it all before it's a month or two old. That said, personal anecdotal stories about how someone used fresh fruit "one time" and didn't have an infection do not translate to "It's safe to use fresh fruit."

Some people use campden tablets to treat their municipal water to remove chlorine. Then when they get to the the secondary stage where they want to add fruit, they just soak it in a mild bleach solution for a few minutes to sanitize it. Uh . . . I got nuthin'

When you boil fruit a substantial portion of the flavor and aroma is carried off into the atmosphere in the steam. I suppose you can compensate by adding 25 pounds of boiled fruit mush to your 5 gallon batch . . . but . . .

As someone else stated, I don't use fruit much either. I tend to like beers that taste like beer. For me, if I'm in the mood for the taste of chocolate raspberry... I'll eat cheesecake.

That said - I was talked into brewing this. 99.999% of what I brew is based on what I want to drink. When someone else suggests they'd like it if I brewed _________ . . . I'm on it.

 

[stickyfinger]

sulfites work well to remove chlorine and chloramines, but they aren't used to sanitize beer b/c the pH is too high. You'd have to add a ton of sulfites for there to be enough free sulfites to do the job. They might be ok to use for sanitizing fresh fruit (provided it had a lowish pH) if you could distribute the sulfites throughout the fruit somehow I guess, seems unlikely.

 

[stickyfinger]

sulfites work well to remove chlorine and chloramines, but they aren't used to sanitize beer b/c the pH is too high. You'd have to add a ton of sulfites for there to be enough free sulfites to do the job. They might be ok to use for sanitizing fresh fruit (provided it had a lowish pH) if you could distribute the sulfites throughout the fruit somehow I guess, seems unlikely.

Oh, I forgot, brewers yeast also often can't ferment something that has sulfites in it. I sulfited a batch of cider and then tried to use US-05 to ferment it last year. It wouldn't budge. I had to go get some wine yeast to get it going.

 

[mongoose33]

I don't know a thing about adding fruit to beer, but if one wants to sanitize it before adding--and sulfites aren't low enough in pH to do that--what about rinsing with Star-San to sanitize the fruit?

We always say "Don't Fear The Foam" when sanitizing fermenters, so it seems to me that rinsing in Star-San would be little different than foam in a fermenter.

Since nobody suggested that, what am I missing?

 

[sgreene820]

As a sometime cider maker, I use it when getting fresh pressed cider, to suppress wild yeast for 48 hours before adding the yeast of my choice. Probably same deal with winemakers, at least if they're not using prepared juice.

 

[Horseflesh]

Then I read that municipal water chemistry can be significantly different from one month to the next, and can be drastically different within a year. So without sending in a new sample every month that process was really little more than guessing.

Well... that can be true, but it isn't always true. Just ask your water company. Mine told me there are no significant seasonal variations outside of occasional extra chlorine usage.

 

[sgreene820]

I think you can mostly predict/guess how the water system will diverge from the norm. Lots of rain may dilute chlorides and sulfates, which aren't supplemented to counteract acidity. Lots of winter runoff may add chloride from road salts in the late winter, early spring.

 

[applescrap]

Not exactly.
When you treat ingredients with campden tablets you let it sit 24 hours loosely covered. It does kill off the bacteria and wild yeast, but it dissipates. Wine making forums are bombarded with posts warning newbies not to use campden tablets to "stop fermentation."

I've read where a lot of home brewers choose to freeze their fruit to kill off bacteria and wild yeast. Freezing causes the bacteria, bugs and wild yeast to fall alseep in a dormant state. When you pitch it into your secondary and it thaws out - guess what.

It was really just an observation more than a question. Because there's almost no "home brew talk" about using campden tablets to sanitize fruit additions, I wondered if there was something I was missing.

The way to get the most out of adding fruit would be to throw it into secondary fresh and raw. But then you're throwing in a lot of unwanted potentially infection causing stuff with it. If you have a relatively high gravity beer the alcohol will sanitize things (to a certain extent). But it has to be a substantially high abv to have any worthwhile "sanitizing" properties. 9 times out of 10 you can throw fresh fruit in and not have an issue - especially if you drink it all before it's a month or two old. That said, personal anecdotal stories about how someone used fresh fruit "one time" and didn't have an infection do not translate to "It's safe to use fresh fruit."

Some people use campden tablets to treat their municipal water to remove chlorine. Then when they get to the the secondary stage where they want to add fruit, they just soak it in a mild bleach solution for a few minutes to sanitize it. Uh . . . I got nuthin'

When you boil fruit a substantial portion of the flavor and aroma is carried off into the atmosphere in the steam. I suppose you can compensate by adding 25 pounds of boiled fruit mush to your 5 gallon batch . . . but . . .

As someone else stated, I don't use fruit much either. I tend to like beers that taste like beer. For me, if I'm in the mood for the taste of chocolate raspberry... I'll eat cheesecake.

That said - I was talked into brewing this. 99.999% of what I brew is based on what I want to drink. When someone else suggests they'd like it if I brewed _________ . . . I'm on it.

Freezing the fruit also breaks down the cell walls. Soaking the fruit in camden seems plausible. I think it might need some time though? Idk how long it must sit. I guess you would use it at the rate it is used to kill yeast in cider. Which makes me think potassium sorbate could do the same. Which makes me wonder if potassium sorbate could be a great way to remove the yeast from beer in general. Killing all yeast and drowning it to a stinky sludgy abyss. As long as you are kegging. Curious if these products add flavor.