scorched the bottom of pot

I've made 2 batches now and both times I end up with scorched rings in the bottom of my pot where teh burner rings are. I tried keeping heat as low as possible to keep from burning. I''m using a 5 gallon pot on an 8" burner, takes quite a while to bring to a boil, thinking about getting a turkey fryer soon. anyone have a tip on keeping from scorching my sugars??

Are you stirring with a spoon long enough to get to the bottom?

Sounds like you're not stirring enough. You might try doing late additions on your extracts so you're not adding as much all at once.

Make sure you take the pot off the burner when you add extract anything else.

Also I found that you do not need to have the stove on HIGH to boil. Once I get a good boil I start to lower the settings a tad but still have a good boil.

and I stir a lot with a rubber spatula.

I've started doing the following to prevent scorching for my extract brewing:

1) To steep my grains, I heat the water to 170, and turn it off the flame. Place the grains in the bag for 20-30 min. It's usually cooled to about 155 after 25-30 min. (I have not done this in the winter yet, only spring/summer). When the grains are in the pot, I do not have the burners lit.

2) When adding my extract, I again turn off the flame completely. Add extract, stir well, re-light the burner when it's thoroughly mixed in.

I haven't had any scorching since I started doing it this way.

yes my spatula is lnong enough maybe I do need to stir more, I'll also try adding a little at a time when I get to the extract. I'm on a electric stove right now and never turn it to high usually med high, takes a little long but don't want to coils to glow, know I will burn it good then.

Do I have to boil for 60 min? some kits only require 20, whats the difference?

The most important tip I've read here is to take your pot off the heat before adding extract. After it's blended in, just a modest amount of stirring should prevent scorching.

The length of the boil has to do with the hop additions. If you have a hopped extract, the kit will call for 20 minutes, and that'll be fine. If you are adding your bittering hops in the boil, then you need to boil an hour. It takes that long to extract the hop resins for bittering.

I do remove my pot from the burner when adding my extracts, maybe I need to stir it up a little longer bofore putting it back on the burner.

will a 90 minute boil make it more bitter?

philhead1 said:

I do remove my pot from the burner when adding my extracts, maybe I need to stir it up a little longer bofore putting it back on the burner.

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I let the spoon do the talking as to when I'm ready to turn the heat back on. My spoon reaches the bottom of the pot, so I make sure that I scrape the bottom of the pot with the spoon. If I can pull the spoon out and there's no extract on it, then I'm ready to turn the heat back on (I usually keep stirring a good 30 seconds more because I'm anal, but that's probably not necessary)

If you've got it, a massive whisk works well (I use a restaurant grade balloon whisk).

Gotta be quick if the heat is on. I had a few burn spots yesterday, but nothing too big.

philhead1 wrote:

will a 90 minute boil make it more bitter?

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In short, yes. Hops that go in with 5 minutes or less left are considered aroma hops, at 15 to 30, roughly, they're flavoring hops, and at 45 minutes or more they're bittering hops. An hour is about standard for bittering hops, but the longer the more bitter, up to a point.

ok thanks, note to self "stir my extract analy before turning up heat, more boil more bitter". really starting to dig the more bitter beers, think it started with my steam style. looking to make a few more this winter.

does anyone have a god nut brown ale recipe?? partial grain.

philhead1 said:

Do I have to boil for 60 min? some kits only require 20, whats the difference?

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If you are using unhopped extract, your process should go something like this;

Heat water to boiling, remove from heat and add a portion of your extract ( about 1/4 ) along with your bittering hops. Boil for the length of time you need to acheive your bittering potential, at least 60 minutes or for more bittering 90 minutes. at various times you add your flavour and aroma hops also.
With 10 to 5 minutes left in the boil remove from heat and stir in the rest of your extract and stir well to keep it from scorching. resume boiling until finished.

If using hopped extract and you are not planning on adding more hops, then just boil for 5 to 10 minutes without scorching the wort.

I use a pour slowly/stir quickly method. I place my container of LME in a larger pot of very warm water to heat it up a little before adding it. I feel it allows me to pour a thinner ribbon of it into the brewpot, so large globs of it don't dive in and sink to the bottom. I'm guessing that most probably do this too, but is hasn't been mentioned yet.