A little scorched stuff on the bottom of my kettle

I did my first full boil last weekend in my new SS brew pot. I brought the temp up in what I thought was a reasonable amount of time - I had specialty grains to steep so I stopped at 160° for 30 minutes then up to boiling.

I never had any boil over but did maintain a good rolling boil for the entire hour. After I was all done and got around to the clean up I noticed that I had a silver dollar sized spot of scorched wort in the center of my pot (bummed - I hate anything burnt)

Is this common when boiling wort on a propane burner? Does it matter (I would think yes)? If so, how do you prevent it? Should I set a steel plate on top of the burner and then the pot on top of that?

Just tryin' to do it right...

It could be a little bit of extract. that got scorched. Once the water/grain tea is boiling turn the burner off or completly remove the kettle from the heat source. Then add extract and stir very well until it is completely disolved. then add back to the heat and continue as normal. I got a little scorching on my first extract bact, didn't really effect the flavor much.

Yeah, you need to stir for a bit whn you add extract. To remove that crap use some oxyclean or pbw (soaking). if that doesn't work try a mr. clean magic eraser. it'll come off.

Oxy-Clean got it all off, I just don't want to get it on there in the first place. I kept the boil going while adding the LME last time so next time I'll try it with the fire off and see what happens

LarryC said:

Oxy-Clean got it all off, I just don't want to get it on there in the first place. I kept the boil going while adding the LME last time so next time I'll try it with the fire off and see what happens

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Yeah, I completely scorched my first batch in much the same manner. To my surprise, it still tasted great. On my second I pulled from the heat and it was perfect... no issues at all.

I do extract partial boils and I'm pretty intense about constantly going over the entire bottom of the pot with a spatula or other flat utensil during the boil. Maybe I'm overdoing it. But I started out using a spoon and found that "stuff" I thought was dissolved was hiding on the bottom.

yeoldebrewer said:

I do extract partial boils and I'm pretty intense about constantly going over the entire bottom of the pot with a spatula or other flat utensil during the boil. Maybe I'm overdoing it. But I started out using a spoon and found that "stuff" I thought was dissolved was hiding on the bottom.

Click to expand...

That sounds smart, I'll have to look for a long handled spatula (I'll need the length for the full 5 gal)

I had issues with scorching on my first couple of batches; soaking in vinegar helped pull all of it off.

My last batch I made sure to stir like crazy(it had 11 lbs of DME!) and added the DME slowly and kept it off of the heat until I was sure it was completely mixed. Took about 15-20 min