Calcium Chloride - Where Order/Buy?

[Baby Chee]

Where do you get your calcium chloride?  Can you use simple road salt or is there a form in supermarkets?

[Sailor Con Queso]

Where do you get your calcium chloride?  Can you use simple road salt or is there a form in supermarkets?

I got mine thru my local drug store. It is very common thru all the cheesemaking supply houses. I would not use road salt. It is not food grade and may contain a lot of contaminants.

[wharris]

I get all of mine from Leeners
www.leeners.com

[DeejayDebi]

I get mine from the local brew store - but before they started carrying it I bought it here http://www.dairyconnection.com/equipment.htm#cal

[Baby Chee]

Uhg.  I just went through my well labeled but long disused brewing supplies...

About a quart of calcium chloride is sitting right there labeled up and ready to roll.

[Cheese Head]

Good news, my understeanding is the stuff basically lasts forever . . .

[wharris]

If you dip a finger in, and taste it,  you will understand why it lasts forever.

(don't do it.  its HORRIBLE)

[Sailor Con Queso]

What do you use CaCl for in brewing?

[Baby Chee]

Water treatment.  It's been so long I can't give you specifics on my use, but I was using several different minerals to get rid of certain abundances and then restoring others.  Water is the most important part of brewing and the taste of everything else hinges on the water and its pH.

My biggest use was slaked lime to precipitate out carbonates.

[Sailor Con Queso]

Same in cheese making. Adding CaCl into pastuerized milk can make a lot of difference in the quality of the curd and your final yield.

[DeejayDebi]

Calcium chloride is used in brewing for adding Calcium to the water if it is low in chlorides. It lowers the ph. It's often used with gypsum.

[Baby Chee]

To be a bit more specific: famous brews of the world were made with (of course) local waters.  To get those beers you need to change your water to watch the profiles of the natural waters wherever the beers were made you are emulating.   So they have a lot of minerals and chemicals you can add to water to make a specific beer.

Lucky that much of it tends to be useful for cheese making.

[Sailor Con Queso]

Same with cheese. Milk quality and taste really depend on what the animals eat. "You are what you eat". is definitely tru.