>>> One time (not ready to taste yet) I did not remove the kettle prior to dumping in the LME.
Ah! Clarification. This error was really a dyslexic brain fart more than anything else.
I bought these ingredient kit and recipe from my local brewing store and they come with what I believe to be quite good and well written instructions. They include the instructions:
...
3. One your kettle reaches 165 F, remove your grains and bring the solution to a boil.
4. Once boiling , remove from heat and add your dry and liquid extract while stirring well.
5. Once the extract has dissolved, return to heat again and bring the solution (the "wort") to an aggressive boil while .....
....
In my anticipation and eagerness (I'm still pretty now to this) when I removed the grains I pretty much skipped a line and did:
...
3. One your kettle reaches 165 F, remove your grains and ......
..... remove from heat and add your dry and liquid extract while stirring well.
5. Once the extract has dissolved, return to heat again and bring the solution (the "wort") to an aggressive boil while ....
....
So, no, no scorching. It was really a matter of reading and then realizing "oh, crap". I never thought I'd actually ruined the beer but this is the first batch where I've been actively taking notes and I realized "well, better take a note of this and when the beer is done and in six weeks I'll note if this has an effect. It might be .... gee, I don't really have any idea what effect it might have. Be more carmalized????"
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>>>>1. Are you saying you don't need to actually boil the LME and DME for 60 minutes?
Apparently, yes, they are saying that! Apparently you don't need to boil it at all! And yes, it's news to me. But I went back to the instructions of my Mr. Beer Insta-kit (That was batch #0. It doesn't count as an actual batch) and reread and realized that, yeah, there you merely bring the water to a boil and take it off and add the pre-hopped malt extract to the hot water and that's it. No cooking at all!
Still, I'm having a hard time imagining boiling the hops without any malt. Seems counter intuitive to this noob (but I know that I don't know, so....) Also to add the malt you'd have take stop the boil, wouldn't you, and wouldn't this have an adverse effect on the hops? (In other words, we add the extract at the beginning only because that's the only window during the hop boil to do so???? But then you could do it *after* the hop boil, couldn't you?)
Out of curiosity I'd like to try this but unless I do a control batch at the same time (which is out of my ability as I only have one fermenter), I don't trust that I'll ever be able to evaluate the results.
But it is interesting, isn't it?
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BTW, this wasn't my only mistake. I forgot to toss in the irish moss at the 45 minute of the boil and tossed it in at the 52 minute (sigh... but I figure as long as it dissolved, the worst that can happen is it simply doesn't work). And between a thermometer tip here, a thumbprint inside the fermenter there, the teaspoon used in measuring yeast somewhere else, my sanitation is, while not exactly slovenly, not going to win any praise.