electric element - is it still usable?

I scorched the top part of my electric element on my last brew.
what do you say , should I still use it?

What do you mean scorched? Is it simply covered with burnt wort or is the element itself charred and cracked? I say if it is still in operation (working) use it.

you can see in the picture ( more or less).

It's a bit charred.

Boil some water with it and see what happens.

yeah just do a test - if it still works then use it!

If it works, use it...

There is a story here... so howd it get charred?

The Pol said:

There is a story here... so howd it get charred?

Click to expand...

Not sure how/when it happened, but here's the story

that's my temporary Mash Tun/HLT , It has an electric element and a strainer as a filter with a dip tube.




I'm trying a new Concept (new to me) , of fly sparging with cold water when the element in the mash tun is maintaining the temperature of the whole mash.a pump is mixing the the cold water, so there's need for two outputs in the tank, one for the pump and one for draining.



Because i don't have a second valve in my Tun yet, every gallon or so i moved the output of the pump to the boil kettle for a few seconds, probably in one of those times the level of wort went too low, but the weird thing is, the a part of the element that got charred is not the very top.


BTW, It's still working
Thanks for the replies

Cheese
1) most people fly sparge with hot water, and there has been a small amount of debate but for the most part hot water seems to win.
2) That looks like a lot of deadspace in your mash tun.
3) If that heating element runs without water it will scorch and then die.
Not to bag on your bucket setup, and I know some people have been using them for a while, but an insulated cooler should hold your temps within a degree or two for an hour.

bdavanza said:

Cheese
1) most people fly sparge with hot water, and there has been a small amount of debate but for the most part hot water seems to win.
2) That looks like a lot of deadspace in your mash tun.
3) If that heating element runs without water it will scorch and then die.
Not to bag on your bucket setup, and I know some people have been using them for a while, but an insulated cooler should hold your temps within a degree or two for an hour.

Click to expand...

I've tried the insulated cooler setup and it's working OK, but I want to achieve a totally automate , 2 vessels setup. and with a cooler i can't do that.

about the cold water sparging, the whole mash is kept in a constant temperature during sparging, so it's the same affect as sparging with hot water.

I'm Aware to the dead space issue but don't know what to do about it yet.