I was brewing in my eBIAB kettle last night. Things seemed to be going well, but I did notice what seemed to be a faint burning smell during the mash, but I could see no obvious source. After pulling the bag of grains out, and giving the kettle a good stir to grab a sample for a refractometer reading, I felt a thick, sticky substance on the bottom of the kettle near my Blichmann Boil Coil (120V 2250W). Pulling my spoon up I saw this waxy tan/gray gelatinous goop.
At first I thought maybe I left something in there after washing the kettle and it melted. But there was no chemical smell and the wort didn't have any chemical flavors. So I just stirred it back in thinking it was some sort of grain dust build-up. It seemingly dissolved away as it heated up to a boil.
After I finished the boil and transferred the wort to my fermentor, I saw this horrible caked on brittle burn build-up over most of the electric coil. The one thing that I was thinking was maybe some of the crushed grain powder got through the nylon BIAB bag, then collected around the coil, which was locally very hot and burned there. There was a small amount of powder/dust after milling the grain, which I poured into the bag thinking it would be even easier to convert that to sugars.
But some grain dust doesn't seem like an uncommon thing, but burning a coil this badly can't be a common occurrence. Looking for suggestions from people? Below is my recipe and my mash schedule. I know, I'll have people wanting to tell me I don't need to do the multi-temp step mash with today's grains, but that's not what my question is about...
For a 5 gallon batch:
11 lbs 2-row
0.75 lbs Caramel 40L (which I didn't add to the bag until my 168F mashout step)
0.5 lbs Honey malt
0.5 lbs White wheat
1.5 qt/lb grist ratio
15 min @ 100F
20 min @ 122F
75 min @ 150F (was originally planned to just be 60, but I got sidetracked)
15 min @ 168F
At first I thought maybe I left something in there after washing the kettle and it melted. But there was no chemical smell and the wort didn't have any chemical flavors. So I just stirred it back in thinking it was some sort of grain dust build-up. It seemingly dissolved away as it heated up to a boil.
After I finished the boil and transferred the wort to my fermentor, I saw this horrible caked on brittle burn build-up over most of the electric coil. The one thing that I was thinking was maybe some of the crushed grain powder got through the nylon BIAB bag, then collected around the coil, which was locally very hot and burned there. There was a small amount of powder/dust after milling the grain, which I poured into the bag thinking it would be even easier to convert that to sugars.
But some grain dust doesn't seem like an uncommon thing, but burning a coil this badly can't be a common occurrence. Looking for suggestions from people? Below is my recipe and my mash schedule. I know, I'll have people wanting to tell me I don't need to do the multi-temp step mash with today's grains, but that's not what my question is about...
For a 5 gallon batch:
11 lbs 2-row
0.75 lbs Caramel 40L (which I didn't add to the bag until my 168F mashout step)
0.5 lbs Honey malt
0.5 lbs White wheat
1.5 qt/lb grist ratio
15 min @ 100F
20 min @ 122F
75 min @ 150F (was originally planned to just be 60, but I got sidetracked)
15 min @ 168F
