Best way to clean scorched wort

I rushed my brew today and turned on the gas before my extract was fully dissolved. I normally don't use LME, but I figured I could turn on just one burner to medium-low while I added LME to the other side of the kettle and stirred (my kettle sits over two burners on a gas stove). I was wrong. I cleaned out the trub after transferring and there's a small scorched spot. I don't think it's enough to affect the wort, but it's stubborn as hell to clean. Soaking in PBW didn't help much either. I'm wondering what you have found to be successful in cleaning a scorched kettle

Barkeeper's Friend is great for stainless steel.

Stainless or aluminum?

Stainless, try some oxyclean overnight. A little scrubby should finish it off in the morning.

Aluminum, just some good ol' elbow grease is all you can really do. Hot hot water soak.

It's a stainless kettle. I'll give the oxyclean and barkeeper's friend a shot. Thanks!

Long ago I had a scorched kettle and tried a good dozen things before boiling vinegar finally did the trick. It was basicals magic.

Vinegar is bad ass, since it is a mild acid I would not use it on aluminum but it's completely safe for stainless and glass.

jrstaples1 said:

It's a stainless kettle. I'll give the oxyclean and barkeeper's friend a shot. Thanks!

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As noted by the two posters above, vinegar is a great option. I had forgotten it's awesome power. Lol!

As for oxyclean, make sure it's oxyclean "free". No dyes or perfumes.

Holy cow, vinegar did the trick. For $0.79, a 32 oz bottle gave me about a quarter inch in the kettle. I put the stove flame as low as it would go (cool enough that I could still put my hand in), and gave it about 5 minutes. The old caramelized light brown stuff came off right away, but the recent scorched black stuff took longer. I hit it with the rough side of a dish sponge every few minutes and it was slowly coming off. You can help it along by scraping (plastic is probably best if you want to avoid scratches). It took about 20 minutes total and I have a brand new looking kettle. Maybe this is common knowledge, but I'll use vinegar for periodic cleaning from now on. Thanks for the tip!

Good job. I had to use wooden kabob sticks to scrape it off the stove top after I had a boil over or two, that was super annoying.