In article , Paul Richards
writes
Any home-brewers out there?

We have just decided to have a go at making some homemade wine for the
first time. All the recipes we have found include the instructions
'add X campden tablets' and I dimly remember the same from when my
mother made the stuff 20+ years ago. The problem is, where do you
obtain these magical tablets? 'In the olden days' we would buy them
(and other related paraphernalia) from Boots but these days they've
never heard of the things. Can anyone suggest where we might look for
them? We live in SE London.

Campden tablets are a convenient but expensive way of using sodium
metabisulphite. Better to buy the chemical in powder form and use a very small
pinch in place of a tablet. Despite what Frere Jacques says elsewhere, sodium
metabisulphite is very useful stuff. The sulphur dioxide it provides is the
only preservative allowed in British beer and cider. It is useful for killing
off wild yeasts, and some commercial cider makers use it for that purpose
before fermenting with a wine yeast. It is even useful to add small quantities
to a wine or cider even if you are fermenting with the natural yeast, as it
tends to kill off the weaker yeasts and promote a healthier fermentation.

Sodium metabisulphite is useful in that, if you have cleaned and sterilised a
container with caustic soda and/or domestic bleach, the sod met will neutralise
the last traces of these chemicals. Leaving a small amount of a strong solution
in an empty vessel will keep it sweet-smelling and sterile. No one involved in
fermenting anything to produce alcohol should be without sodium metabisulphite.
Forget about all other cleaner/sterilisers other than these three.

A list of excellent home brew shops is available on the brupaks.com web site,
or you can buy sodium metabisulphite in larger quantities from Vigo Supplies
www.vigoltd.com.
--
Roy Bailey
West Berkshire.