# Beer brewing - burn prevention! **URL:** \ **Category:** Anova Support\ **Created:** [October 10, 2018, 11:47am UTC](https://community.anovaculinary.com/t/beer-brewing-burn-prevention/17025 "2018-10-10T11:47:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jt196](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/59ef9b/32.png) [@jt196](https://community.anovaculinary.com/u/jt196)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2018, 11:47am UTC](https://community.anovaculinary.com/t/beer-brewing-burn-prevention/17025/1 "2018-10-10T11:47:44Z")
Folks - I’ve been using an Anova one for brewing beer for a few years now and enjoy the simplicity and lack of clean up afterwards. My grains go into a BIAB bag, and the bag is separated from the anova using one of those heat protection grates you use to put hot dishes onto a table. It pretty much works very well, but quite often, I end up with burnt sugar on my heating element, and I’m trying to avoid this. The simplest way is to make low gravity beers, using full volume mashes - it seems that a high concentration of sugars in the wort cause this burning. Last time, the element overheated so much I couldn’t use it as it kept tripping out my power. I was wondering if anybody else has this problem, or it’s just me (and my 240v UK higher voltage) and my dumb highish gravity brews. I was thinking about using a dimmer switch to decrease the voltage going into the Anova and thus the temp on the element, but I don’t know enough about electricity to know whether this is a dumb idea - and the current will go elsewhere in the system. Any help please! Cheers. ---
**Author:** ![Brian1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Brian1](https://community.anovaculinary.com/u/Brian1)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2018, 12:33pm UTC](https://community.anovaculinary.com/t/beer-brewing-burn-prevention/17025/2 "2018-10-10T12:33:03Z")
There is a reason it’s supposed to be used in water only. Unfortunately, solids dissolved in the water will accumulate on the hearing element. Back when i first got my Anova, i wad living in an area with incredibly hard water, and if need to scale and scrub the thing once a month. It’s the same with you and your wort. Having the heat element directly in it, there’s no way, that I’m aware of, to prevent this from happening ---
**Author:** ![jt196](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/59ef9b/32.png) [@jt196](https://community.anovaculinary.com/u/jt196)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2018, 2:22pm UTC](https://community.anovaculinary.com/t/beer-brewing-burn-prevention/17025/3 "2018-10-10T14:22:03Z")
Yeah it’s definitely a little bit of that - it’s a bit of scorching as well. Most breweries use electric heating elements, you have to scrub them after use, so nothing new there really - just a smaller surface area for the heat to pass over than a lot of brewing kettles - so they get hotter. Sugars and proteins scorch - caramelisation, Maillard and all that. Was just wondering if any other anova brewers had encountered and solved this issue. As I said, my current solution is to either make sure the gravity is quite low, or to avoid using the stick heat the wort for longer than a minute or two - and let the gas do the work. ---
**Author:** ![gregpas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/dbc845/32.png) [@gregpas](https://community.anovaculinary.com/u/gregpas)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2019, 11:56pm UTC](https://community.anovaculinary.com/t/beer-brewing-burn-prevention/17025/4 "2019-10-21T23:56:14Z")
I have been using the Anova for beer brewing for 3 years now. I have no issue with pale malt or brewers malt. Pilsner however does burn on the unit.