New brew kettle - light Rust / Corrosion at TC ferrule welds

[moeott]

Hoping someone can bring me some peace of mind here, have a brand new ebiab set up I'm working on.
I filled the new kettle in order to calibrate my sight glass, drained it. I still had all the valves, element, probe etc connected for a few days, then noticed some rust as shown in the photos.

I did a full degrease with tsp and star San soak for 30 minutes and then air dried everything. Wondeing if Ill be ok?

 

[cyberbackpacker]

Get some Barkeeper's Friend and a green scrubby (or SS) and "clean" those areas. They will be fine afterwards and moving forward!

 

[cswant88]

Yeah, some barkeepers friend should do it. Scrub that off there, rinse and dry well and let it sit exposed to the air for a while to passivate the stainless.

I bought a new kettle that had some little plug welds on the inside where they welded the reinforcement plate for the handles. I had a little rust in those spots after first use, the barkeepers friend took it right off and I haven't had any issues since.

 

[SpikeBrewing]

Some surface rust on stainless is usually not something to be concerned about and can be easily taken care of with Bar Keepers Friend. However the issue you are seeing is not surface rust. It's from a cut rate weld job. The weld was not back purged and what you're seeing is sugaring that was ground down to hide the cut rate weld job. Most likely the kettle was welded offshore and not to any sanitary welding standards. Unfortunately that area now has almost no corrosion resistance and although BKF will remove some of the rust it will come back. You can already see pitting as well.