Burnt wort at bottom of boil kettle

[judasegg]

Fellow brewers,

I'm looking for some advice. For my hopstopper, I used 2 pieces of stainless mesh. I have hole in middle of top mesh that drainage piping goes through, so inside mesh "sandwich" I have upside-down copper "T" with 2 small 15mm copper tubes attached to "T".

I was having lots of deadspace, so what I ended up doing was putting end caps on the copper tubes, then slicing them with hacksaw, as you would in a mash tun. Basically, almost a "copper mini-manifold" inside mesh.

The problem I am having is this - My boil kettle is a Buffalo 40L, and has hidden element. With mesh hopstopper sitting on bottom of kettle, I'm getting burned wort around the centre of the base, presumably where the element is...

Have other people with hopstoppers experienced this? If so, any good solutions? I could try putting something to prop up the hopstopper such that it is not in contact with bottom of boil kettle, but that will put me back at square one in terms of deadspace...

 

[orange]

I get the same thing at the centre of my 40l buffalo. My hop strainer is a simple straight copper tube with holes drilled in it. To get rid of the burnt wort and scale i soak with a citric acid solution. It comes off quite easy. :

 

[orange]

I've had a thought. It may not be burnt wort but wort coloured scale. Either way the solution is the same. :