Cleaning up?

Just brewed my first batch last night (I halfed the recipe for a Brewer's Best Weizen kit, figured it made sense to start off with kits until I know what I'm doing.) It's happily fermenting right now and I'm looking forward to trying it next month.

Here's the question: there's a little bit of burnt residue on the bottom of my brewpot, directly over where the heating element was on my stove. I have a feeling it's burnt malt - there's not much of it, though. There's similar residue on my stove from a very slight boil-over. It's very resistant to being cleaned up and since the pot is brand-new I want to keep it in good condition.

What's good stuff for cleaning this up? Ordinary dish soap isn't doing the trick.

(Side question: the OG of this batch was extremely high, around 1.112. Which is most likely: I took a bad reading, I didn't stir the wort and the water enough, I ruined my beer, or this is going to be an insanely strong brew?)

To answer the last question first, I'm pretty sure you took a bad sample(not mixed or didn't adjust for temp.). So, your fine it that area.

As far as tough cleaning, I would use OxyClean. Let it soak overnite and get it in the morning. Welcome to the Obsession.

chardish said:

What's good stuff for cleaning this up? Ordinary dish soap isn't doing the trick.

(Side question: the OG of this batch was extremely high, around 1.112. Which is most likely: I took a bad reading, I didn't stir the wort and the water enough, I ruined my beer, or this is going to be an insanely strong brew?)

Click to expand...

Most likely you had a bad reading because you didn't stir it up enough. If you made a 2.5 gallon batch with 1/2 the ingredients, then the OG should be what the instructions say.

I find that either oxyclean made into a paste and then used as a scouring powder, or Barkeeper's friend, work well to remove burnt wort from pans and from the stove. I've needed to do that quite a few times!

Next time, remove the pot from the stove when you add your extract, stir extremely well, and then replace it onto the burner. That will help with scorching the extract.

After siphoning I immediately fill up the kettle with hot water and a drop of Dawn, soak overnite, then cleans right up. May not work for you if you have scorching on the bottom.

When I add my extract after my steep, I add when temp is anywhere around 200F, and I avoid the scorching, well at least so far.