Scorched (Carbonized) Wort in Kettle Drain Tube

[Emian]

We have a Stout 3bbl direct fired kettle. It has a conical bottom with grain tube from it.

On our first batch, we got considerable scorching in the drain tube, which imparted a significant burnt flavor to the brew.

We had three burners under the kettle, one of which was under the drain tube. We've removed that burner for our second attempt.

Any suggestions on avoiding scorching in the drain tube? We were thinking that if remvoing this burner doesn't work, we'd wrap the tube in high temp insulation - and/or circulate while boiling (from the drain tube to the tangential return.

Any advice or suggestions welcome. The kettle is here - it's the lower tube that is gettng scorched... http://conical-fermenter.com/wp-cont...5TW-TI-SG1.jpg

[grassrootsvt]

You could have a welder create a heat shield out of stainless - blocking the burner from the direct flame. You could also try to build a heat shield, somehow, out of brick. Once upon a time, we went with the former option and it worked great...

[Emian]

OK - we did a second batch - we removed the burner that was under the drain tube. We wrapped the drain tube in heat shield wrap - and then sleeved it in another stainless tube.

We still had caramelized wort in the drain tube.

It doesn't taste burned like the first batch - but definitely toasted.

Any ideas on what else we can try? Does anyone circulate the wort while boiling? Would that help?

Ian

[almalkin]

Is it possible to throttle back your burner output a bit? I'm not sure what kind of BTUs your burners are putting out, but you may want to try dialing them back.

We are using a Stout 2 bbl kettle with a 32 jet burner and I have had a couple of issues with scorching in the tangential inlet. It wasn't bad enough to taint the beer, but I found that we were probably running the burner hotter than was necessary. It takes a bit longer to come to a boil, but we haven't had any issues since.