Tea kettles, electric gizmos, and food fights

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Dracarya,

Why?

[Xray the Enforcer]

Bringing the water to a rolling boil will drive off any dissolved carbon dioxide.

[Which Tyler]

Not to mention that "near boiling" isn't hot enough to make tea properly

[deleted01]

Dracarya,

Why?

I don't know anyone who boils the water in a microwave, but I do know people who, upon finding that their tea has gone cold, microwave it to a drinkable temperature, which just sounds vile. You can get a fairly decent electric kettle for next to nothing, so why torture yourself with awful tea? Embrace the perfect cuppa!

[Xray the Enforcer]

Not to mention that "near boiling" isn't hot enough to make tea properly

That too.

[Raja]

I microwave my tea when it's gone lukewarm. I despise lukewarm tea, and even though it's certainly not as good, it's not that terrible!

[Pebble thats Stubby]

I'm no expert but I think Nuking water to nearly boiling point will use a lot more electricity that boiling the same water in an electric kettle. So apart from everything else you will be saving money by using a Kettle .

Also Tea brews better if you poor the water onto a teabag rather than dropping a tea bag into boiled or nearly boiling water. Yes you could use a spoon and stir.

[Fragile Bird]

Way too long to read, but interesting. Essentially, because tea is supposed to be made with boiling water, and boiling boils the water evenly, while microwaving doesn't. But, heating water to just below boiling is actually ok for green tea, which is not supposed to be made with boiling water.

Pebble, I worked for a company that made appliances, and they were asked by a consumer show in Canada whether it was more efficient to use a microwave to boil a cup of water or a kettle. Being engineers, they took the question very seriously, and determined that it was very even in cost, but when you microwave one cup you get the exact amount you want, and using a kettle you usually boil more than you want, so for one cup the microwave was more efficient. However, more testing has shown that using an electric kettle is as much as 25% more efficient, which in Canada works out to maybe a dollar and half in savings over a year, considering the short amount of time and small amount of electricity involved.

Why boil water for tea.

Because a proper cup of black tea must be made with water that’s come to a rolling boil. A kettle is designed to heat water evenly to 212 degrees Fahrenheit. Heat at the bottom of the kettle—whether from a heating element embedded in an electric device or from a burner on the stove—creates a natural convection current: The hot water rises and the cool water falls in a cyclical fashion, which uniformly heats the contents of the kettle to a boil (at which point an electric kettle clicks off or a stovetop kettle whistles).

But microwaves don’t heat water evenly, so the boiling process is difficult to control. Microwave ovens shoot tiny waves into the liquid at random locations, causing the water molecules at those points to vibrate rapidly. If the water isn’t heated for long enough, the result is isolated pockets of very hot or boiling water amid a larger body of water that’s cooler. Such water may misleadingly exhibit signs of boiling despite not being a uniform 212 degrees. For instance, what appears to be steam rising from a mug of microwaved water is only moist vapor evaporating off the water’s surface and condensing into mist on contact with cooler air—it’s the same principle that makes our breath visible on frigid days.

Why is water temperature so important to good-tasting tea? When tea leaves meet hot water, hundreds of different compounds that contribute flavor and aroma dissolve and become suspended in the water. Black tea contains two kinds of complex phenolic molecules, also known as tannins: orange-colored theaflavins and red-brown thearubigins. These are responsible for the color and the astringent, brisk taste of brewed black tea, and they are extracted only at near-boiling temperatures.

Water also cooks certain volatile compounds, chemically altering them to produce more nuanced flavors and aromas, such as the earthy, malty, and tobacco notes in black tea. When the water isn’t hot enough to instigate these reactions and produce these bold flavors, tea tastes insipid.

Overheated water results in bad tea, too—and this is also easier to do in a microwave than in a kettle, since there’s no mechanism to indicate when the water has reached a boil. The longer water boils, the more dissolved oxygen it loses—and tea experts say that dissolved oxygen is crucial for a bright and refreshing brew. Microwaved water can also be taken to several degrees above boiling if heated for too long (which is impossible in a kettle, because the metallic surface prevents overheating). Such ultra-hot water destroys desired aromatic compounds and elicits an excess of astringent, bitter notes by overcooking the leaves. Overheated water can also accentuate naturally occurring impurities in the water that contribute off flavors to the final brew.

It’s possible that the material of the heating vessel also affects tea’s flavor. Modern day kettles are invariably made from stainless steel. While stainless steel is considered a nonreactive material, research has shown that minuscule amounts of chromium, iron, and nickel can migrate from a container or a utensil into the food. These don’t pose a safety threat, but they may well subtly affect the taste of water boiled in a kettle. In contrast, only glazed ceramics, glass, and plastics are safe to use in microwaves. It’s not inconceivable that the lack of trace metal ions are partly responsible for a lousy cup of microwave tea.

Microwaved water isn’t totally useless for all tea. In fact, water that’s microwaved to below boiling is ideal for green tea. The mellow, brothy flavors prized in green tea are mostly derived from specific savory-tasting amino acids that start to dissolve at 140 degrees. While mouth-puckering tannins are desirable in black tea, with green tea, boiling water extracts too many astringent notes and too much bitter caffeine that would overwhelm the delicate amino acids. Caffeine is extremely soluble at 212 degrees, but significantly less so at 145 to 175 degrees, the ideal temperature range for brewing green tea.

[Seli]

You're right. I now live in a place with enough storage room that I can feasibly store it away in between visits. Kind of embarrassed this hasn't dawned on me yet.

I'm always curious about loose leaf. I've tried it a couple of times, but I couldn't really taste a difference in any of the basic stuff. At the time, it didn't justify the extra expense of loose leaf (so bizarre it costs more). However, I was a smoker and I quit a month or so ago. I'm wondering if maybe I'd notice a real difference now that would be worth the increase in price. I drink mostly plain stuff - green tea, earl grey, a barley tea. Not too into flavored teas. What say you, loose leaf drinkers?

I like loose tea leaves because they tend to be available from smaller sources, a specific area or plantation rather than the blends that tend to be more common in bags. And there are the varieties I've never even seen in bags. So rather than going for loose leave varieties of the blends you are probably used to I'd suggest trying some of those - if you can actually find them I might be lucky with the local stores.

[Myshkin]

First of all, I suppose you tea drinkers can do whatever you like, I really don't give a shit, but anyone who microwaves coffee is an awful human being.

Pebble, I worked for a company that made appliances, and they were asked by a consumer show in Canada whether it was more efficient to use a microwave to boil a cup of water or a kettle. Being engineers, they took the question very seriously, and determined that it was very even in cost, but when you microwave one cup you get the exact amount you want, and using a kettle you usually boil more than you want, so for one cup the microwave was more efficient.

There's a very simple way to make sure you're not heating more water than you need in your kettle; take the cup you're going to be drinking out of, fill it with water, pour the water in the kettle.

[Which Tyler]

There's a very simple way to make sure you're not heating more water than you need in your kettle; take the cup you're going to be drinking out of, fill it with water, pour the water in the kettle.

yeah, I was thinking exactly that (and add a little for vapour loss), alternatively, if it's your own kettle, simply getting used to putting the right amount of water in, many have a scale somewhere, usually graduated by "cups", but knowing your scale, and knowing your mugs it's really not hard to boil the right amount, hell I can do it just by how heavy the kettle feels once I've added the water.

Mind you, I always make my teak in a thermos-pot (or coffee in a caffetierre) anyway, so a full kettle is usually right for me, but I still know it well enough to judge 1 or 2 cups when required.

[Fragile Bird]

First of all, I suppose you tea drinkers can do whatever you like, I really don't give a shit, but anyone who microwaves coffee is an awful human being.

There's a very simple way to make sure you're not heating more water than you need in your kettle; take the cup you're going to be drinking out of, fill it with water, pour the water in the kettle.

yeah, I was thinking exactly that (and add a little for vapour loss), alternatively, if it's your own kettle, simply getting used to putting the right amount of water in, many have a scale somewhere, usually graduated by "cups", but knowing your scale, and knowing your mugs it's really not hard to boil the right amount, hell I can do it just by how heavy the kettle feels once I've added the water.

Mind you, I always make my teak in a thermos-pot (or coffee in a caffetierre) anyway, so a full kettle is usually right for me, but I still know it well enough to judge 1 or 2 cups when required.

Well, good thought, but all the electric kettles I see have a minimum fill line, and for the standard 1.8 litre tea kettle, that's usually more than one cup.

[Myshkin]

Well, good thought, but all the electric kettles I see have a minimum fill line, and for the standard 1.8 litre tea kettle, that's usually more than one cup.

Another reason why electric kettles are inferior.

[Filippa Eilhart]

mine doesn't.

[Fragile Bird]

Well, the ones in North America do.

ETA: As I said, I have a small sized kettle, that takes a maximum of 1 litre of water. I just double-checked, and the minimum is .5L. The standard kettle is 1.8L, and I think the minimum is at least .75L, or a little over 3 cups.

[Which Tyler]

You get a more nimum fill for kettles with exposed elements for obvious reasons, not seen one in over a decade though, kettles with a full cross-section element don't need a minimum fill

[north of the wall]

What is wrong with always keeping your kettle full and just reboiling the same water not used last time? This is what always happens in my household (and most I know)

Also the only time I clean my kettle is when the kids have put something yuck in it (usually dishwashing liquid) and then I just boil it with vinegar and wash accordingly. Makes it good as new.

[Fragile Bird]

All I know is the majority of the kettles I see in the store have minimum fill line, and this includes the most common ones sold in Canada that have a base that is plugged in with a prong that the kettle sits on, and the kettle is wire-free. Those kettles have no exposed elements in the bottom.

Doing a quick search, here's a really neat induction water heater, where you sit your cup on a base and the insert a metal rod that heats the water to boiling and the shuts off. It's the winner of the Dyson Award for innovative appliances. The reason why the designer created the heater was because:

"The majority of electric kettles are extremely wastefully designed – the minimum fill line is usually at 500 millilitres," said Chudy. "This means that if you want one cup of tea – 250 millilitres – you waste 50 per cent of the hot water and therefore 50 per cent of the energy."

"We set out to redesign the electric kettle from the ground up, asking the question: how can we change people's habits of overfilling electric kettles in order to save energy?"

So, while there may be kettles that do not have a minimum fill line, according to a designer, the majority do. Don't take my word for it. :)

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Okay, I boiled water on ththe stove and poured it over my tea bag. The tea tasted exactly like the tea I make by heating the water and putting the Tea Bag in the water.

[Myshkin]

Okay, I boiled water on ththe stove and poured it over my tea bag. The tea tasted exactly like the tea I make by heating the water and putting the Tea Bag in the water.

You're doing it wrong. This is how tea should be made (and if you watch closely you'll see signs of a typical Aussie BBQ).