Is this beerstone or something else? White haze in my kettle.

Question

I recently moved. As part of the move, I changed my brewing process and went back to using my old brew pot (instead of an electric turkey fryer) and started using filtered tap water instead of distilled (the water tastes better here).

After brewing for the first time at the new place, I noticed a layer of white haze at the bottom of the kettle. Is this beer stone (I thought that was always a little brown)? I've never experienced this white haze before--it might have to do with the water change or the fact that I'm using a kettle I haven't touched for years.

If so, has anyone had success getting it off? What do you use? Star San, CLR, Oxiclean, PBW? Thanks!

Answer 1

I'm guessing what you're seeing is Limescale. The area to which you moved probably has a higher mineral content in the water which causes more noticeable deposits.

The wikipedia value - Limescale

I'm using Citric Acid to remove this. It can be either in a powder form (here it's called "Lemon salt") or as a part of a commercial cleaning solution.

A sure way to know if this is the problem is looking in your Kettle to see if the same deposit exists there.

Answer 2

Its likely mineral deposits in your new tap water. PBW is great stuff normally, but it can cause the precipitation of some of the minerals when hot solutions cool off. So if you clean with the PBW and then rinse it out with cold water form the tap you end up getting scaling on the equipment. The secret is to rinse your equipment with hot water after the PBW cleansing phase. That will carry away the precipitated minerals.

Its a pain to do that IMO, so I don't bother. The minerals are in the water so its not like getting them off the pot is going to prevent them from being in the brew next time you brew.