what is this on the bottom of my brew pot?

The other day I went and cleaned my brew pot with bar keepers friend. I thoroughly rinse the pot. And I let set for a week. when I came back and look at the pot I saw what you see in the picture. These are not chips but more less discoloration. this is a stainless steel brew kettle. Is there anyway to get rid of this or will this be an issue?

If I were to hazard a guess I'd say it's water deposits or something. They look like they're centered around the 'rings' at the bottom of the pot so maybe the deposits are nucleating from there.

unionrdr said:

Looks like the harsh cleanser pitted the surface to me. Try some PBW with a scotch brite "green" pad. If it isn't too deep,that should fix it.I used to polish commutators on elec motor armetures with the stuff.

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Uh, yeah, I wouldn't be using that to clean a brew pot. Why?

Rick

today before i brewed I used some PB W and then I use some star san in my brew kettle. now my kettle looks great the spots went away.

It looks like it could be beer stone, which is mineral deposits left behind by the wort. Try a 15 minute acid soak with star san. If it is beer stone, it should clean up easily after the acid soak.

Forget all that cleaner going forward. Just fill your kettle with water and a scoop of scent-free oxy-clean (I get the Up and Up brand from Target). Let it soak overnight. The next day you can just about rinse everything out. Anything that sticks comes off with a kitchen brush with zero effort.

pabloj13 said:

Forget all that cleaner going forward. Just fill your kettle with water and a scoop of scent-free oxy-clean (I get the Up and Up brand from Target). Let it soak overnight. The next day you can just about rinse everything out. Anything that sticks comes off with a kitchen brush with zero effort.

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Yup. I do the same. The water comes out of my garage at 165 and works great with a little oxyclean. I run it through my counter flow and follow with clean hot water to rinse. Store my kettles upside down and they're always nice and clean.

I highly doubt it was the bar keepers friend, that stuff is specifically made to clean stuff like stainless steel (says so right on it). Nothing wrong with using oxy either, but I use bar keepers friend whenever I have a little scorched extract at the bottom of the pot and have never had an issue. You don't need to use a lot.

That's a SS pot right? To me it looks like the pot missed the final passivation step during mfg. When you make parts out of stainless steel, tiny particles of the metal from the tools get embedded in and on the surface of the stainless. These bits (microscopic sized) of metal then act as spots that can cause corrosion to begin. The SS won't corrode but the contaminates will. The same thing happens if you use a steel Brillo pad to scrub on SS.
To passivate stainless you dip it for a few minutes in a batch of hot nitric acid (along with a few other things). the nitric acid "eats" all of the contaminates and leaves a surface that is 'passive' and won't support corrosion.