aluminum kettle question. pic attatched

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je52rm

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so i have been killing myself all day long trying to clean up this old 30 quart aluminum turkey fryer i plan on using as a boiling kettle. I first tried non-abrasive cleaning with absolutely no luck at all and then finally resorted to steel wool. It got a great majority of all the tough stains however no matter what i do i cant get these marks/spots/divets off the bottom of the kettle.

Are these possibly normal and caused from prior use when doing turkey frying?

iphone 006.jpg
 
Looks fine to me. Now that you've cleaned it, fill it up with water boil for about 30 - 45 minutes and it will oxidize and turn dark, almost black.
 
next time (if there is), soak it for a day in oxyclean, empty, wipe it for a few seconds with a sponge, and rinse as clean as it's going to get
 
lumpher said:
next time (if there is), soak it for a day in oxyclean, empty, wipe it for a few seconds with a sponge, and rinse as clean as it's going to get

I thought you're not supposed to use oxyclean or PBW on aluminum because it'll leave the metal pitted?
 
I'm not sure but I don't have any oxyclean or PBW anyway. I hit it really hard with steel wool and just now finished boiling water in it for an hour. Does this look correct? There's definitely a dark (almost black in some areas) look to the inside now. Do I just wipe it down and leave it that way?

image-1087200669.jpg
 
Do I just wipe it down and leave it that way?

Yes, and don't scrub it any harder than you MUST to remove organic matter in the future. With each batch you should get more oxidation build-up, which is a good thing.

My only concern about using an old turkey frying pot is to remove ALL the remaining oil/grease that's been soaking into it. If you're confident that you've removed that, then brew away.
 
Hey, that looks A LOT better than the pic of it in your previous thread!
Like Goldiggie said I would just make SURE that all oil and grease residue has been removed beofre using it to boil wort.

At 7.5 gallons you're right on the cusp of the limit for 5 gallon batches, but use it for now and in the future it would make a great HLT should you ever buy a 9 or 10 gallon boil kettle.
 
Sorry, didn't mean to detract from your original question.. I have a 10 gallon aluminum kettle also and the bottom half looks okay. Hard to tell from the pic, but just make sure that the water level you boiled was higher than the level you plan on brewing.

I agree with the person who said that the biggest area of concern for me about using your pot would be making sure you got all the oil off the pot when you were frying with it.

Other than those two things, you should be good to go. And after your first brew with this pot, just make sure you gently clean out all the trub, hop material, and other gunk as soon as you can, so you don't have to scour the pot again. I don't use anything more abrasive than the sponge side of a scrubber. This way you know that the oxide layer you built up should still be good.
 
Cool thank you guys very much for all the info! Man I scrubbed that thing literally 15 different times throughout the day with soapy SOS steel wool pads and rinsed really well with lots of hot water so im pretty sure I got all the oil and residue out. At least I hope I did cause my arms are killing me from all the scrubbing. Hahahahaha got my workout for sure!
 
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