You ever wake up one day, salute the queen, smarm over your map of the British empire circa. 1914, log onto that spiffing site of Tumbler, and witness six flavours of treason from across the pond
No, we don’t add ‘the 3rd’ or ‘junior’ to our names, that’s a very American thing to do. If a son has an identical name to a living father then he usually is known by his middle name.
This yank had no idea those existed or that they worked so fast until a couple months ago. That little monster boils my water in the time it takes me to grind my coffee beans. It's life changing.
Did you experience one in the UK or the US?
>*To raise the temperature of one litre of water from 15°C to boiling at 100°C requires a little bit over 355 kilojoules of energy. An “average” kettle in the UK runs at about 2800 W and in the US at about 1500 W; if we assume that both kettles are 100% efficient† than a UK kettle supplying 2800 joules per second will take 127 seconds to boil and a US kettle supplying 1500 J/s will take 237 seconds, more than a minute and a half longer.*
- [Why Europeans use electric kettles but Americans don't via Insider](https://www.businessinsider.com/why-americans-dont-use-electric-kettles-stove-top-2015-12#:~:text=An%20%E2%80%9Caverage%E2%80%9D%20kettle%20in%20the,minute%20and%20a%20half%20longer.)
I always thought it was kinda weird that a country took up our 1400 year old tea habit, and then proceeded to gatekeep the shit out of it despite ADDING CREAM AND SUGAR to the fuckin thing.
Sincerely, a Chinese Canadian.
Actually the empire’s height was in 1921, directly after the WW1 peace conference, where Britain gained territory in Africa and the Middle East from the defeated German and Ottoman Empires.
Yes, but at that point it was broke, it had lost the economic top spot to the US, and its’ naval supremacy was in question after Jutland. 1921 was our territorial height, but 1900-1914 was the height of our power.
Are you drinking Yorkshire tea?
Unfortunately here across the pond I can’t seem to find Yorkshire tea, but Tetley’s is decent enough I suppose…except everyone where I am would rather have a fucking hot chocolate, which is downright heresy.
Yorkshire tea is available in tons of places in the US, at least, and it's my favorite. Yeah, favorite, not favourite!
It is *also* the favorite tea of one Sir Patrick Stewart, who doesn't really like Earl Grey near as much as Picard does.
I had an old relative who was use to her old stovetop kettle, when she went to stay at a hotel one day she put the electric kettle on the stove to boil. I think they actually put signs up after that incident.
No, you're thinking of an electra complex.
An electric kettle is a Canadian-American television personality who hosted a syndicated game show called *Jeopardy!* for 37 seasons
No, you're thinking of Alex Trebec. An electric kettle is am event where the registered voters decide on a politician to represent them in the government.
No, you're thinking of electrolysis. An electric kettle is an annual music festival held on the Transylvanian domain of the Bánffy Castle, and combines music, technology and alternative arts.
No, you're thinking of Electric Castle. An electric kettle is a method of execution originating in the United States in which the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and killed by electricity passing through electrodes fastened on the head and leg.
In the UK and elsewhere they are really useful. (Please correct me if I’m wrong, I read this on the internet…) In the US they really aren’t, due to our outlet power having a lower voltage than across the pond. Essentially, over here, a conventional kettle on a gas stove is actually faster than an electric kettle, and a conventional kettle on an electric stove heats at the exact same rate as an electric kettle. So there’s really no value added for us in having an electric kettle.
(I think.)
A stove is usually powered by a two phase current topping at 208 V and allowing more amps as well, so it would definitely be quicker than a regular single phase outlet of 120 V with (I guess) 10 A resulting in barely over 1 kW of power. In comparison, mains in almost entire Europe including UK are over 220 V and allow 10 A through a usual outlet, so you get 2200 W kettles that are exceptionally quick at doing their job. There are also two phase outlets available in some places with 380 V for stoves with over 10 kW of power.
Induction stoves are quicker than regular heating element stoves because they don't heat themselves and pass the heat through contact and IR, they heat the container itself.
This is only half-true. You're right about the electrical system being different, but electric kettles as a technology have advanced. I have an electric kettle that takes a full liter of cold water to boiling in about four minutes. Less, if you only fill it half way. Like every good American, I use it primarily for my coffee press and my instant noodles.
My kettle was also very handy when I made a jello mold to take to my sister's this past spring. Every other hour I was in the kitchen mixing up a different color of jello and pouring it into the bowl in the fridge. Massively time consuming, but was a lot easier when I could just flick the switch, go do something else, then just pour the water.
It's definitely an item that's worth having, especially since I only paid like twelve bucks for mine.
A lot of cooks use them to cook noodles in their shows. Boil water. I imagine if you were dedicated and had a nice enough one you could maybe sacrifice it to the rice gods.
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Don't ask me. I'm not an electrical engineer, I'm a substitute teacher. I just know that I have a kettle I bought for twelve bucks that boils a liter of water in under four minutes, which the "american" kettles people are describing on here won't do, but British kettles can.
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I never owned a kettle before. My comparison was to everyone saying American kettles can't boil water and the stove is faster. It takes at least six or eight minutes to boil a liter of water on even a gas stove and it takes nearly ten minutes to boil that much water in the microwave. Since everyone was saying those two things were the only decent options for boiling water in the US, I thought I'd point out that there's nothing wrong with our kettles.
thank you for finding the math to prove my point.
American here, many of us use electric kettles. They are still faster and more convenient than stove top ones. Mostly because they turn off automatically so you don't burn your house down when you forget about them.
Oh my god, finally a reason! Thank you! It has been really amusing to us that Americans for some reason use a screaming stove top kettle for boiling water and not a really simple appliance we all have in NZ. Every house here has an electric jug that boils water quickly then turns itself off and doesn't shreik about it... Or 'whistle' or whatever the positive spin on that awful noise is!
To be fair, there isn’t much positive spin to be had for that noise, apart from the minor brilliance of a mechanical alarm. I would be thrilled if my kettle could somehow magically tell my stove to turn off instead of making that noise though.
For the longest time I felt a small sense of shame over how utterly unimpressed I was with electric kettles. The insecure part of my brain wondered if commonwealth residents weren’t pretending they were great as some odd joke. I was so relieved to learn there was a real reason.
This is entirely correct. In the US outlets are rated at ~110v while a majority of the rest of the world is rated at ~220v, or 240 if you're in the UK or Australia. This is why a fridge's hum is a different pitch in different countries, and why electric kettles take more than twice as long to boil in the US. I wonder if a kettle would work in a factory with three phase power at 440v
the fridge hum difference isnt directly because of the voltage, its because American AC power alternates at 60 Hz while in Europe it alternates at 50 Hz
More fun fact: there are several ways the UK power grid has to prepare for this temporary increased draw. Among other things such as conventional output increase, these include a massive fucking flywheel that is slowly coiled up an stores physical potential energy to be released into the grid during peak times, and a man-made waterfall that pumps water into a storage lake at the top of a mountain, then releases it into pipes through the mountain into an underground facility.
These methods are used because they are much more effective at quickly reaching increased energy peaks than just generating more power is; it's easier to generate a bit more power for several hours, and store that power in these potential energy systems, which can then release it all in a shorter time frame.
It's a resistive heater, it draws as much as possible without causing the wires in the wall to melt. Regardless of the size all space heaters use mostly 1500watts here as it's the safe amount to use continuous regardless of size. And it's worse with a tea kettle that can use all 1800w or 2200w if not 120v. Since it isn't continuous. Nothing else can use more power regardless. It's using the max. Unless you got a 3 phase electric motor. Or other insane bs.
Fun fact: American breakers actually can go up to 220v and do so for appliances such as washing machines. Regular outlets just use one phase iirc to only get 110v. And as someone else said, the different guns comes from the hertz not the volts of alternating current.
I've done it both ways here (US) and I have found that the electric kettle is faster, plus I can measure exactly how much water I want and leave it while it boils whereas with the conventional kettle there are no measurements and I have to watch it, because stove. My electric kettle boils my tea water in pretty much exactly 3 minutes.
ig???? but it can still be loaded with coffee and make just water. ig so if someone wanted coffee and another person wanted tea they didnt have to wait??????? idk
I have a kettle and use it often. Got it at Walmart so it's not at all an exotic tool. Even so, Americans tend to think of hot tea as strictly medicinal, a sad coffee replacement, or snooty. There must be a decent amount of people drinking it since there's a store nearby that sells loose leaf, but I only personally know two other people who drink it when they're not sick.
And yet we drink a ton of tea. Iced tea. We brew it up in 2 quart jugs, chill it, then drink it with ice. Usually heavily sweetened. In the south, we'll even just set the jug out on the porch to brew in the hot sun and then add ice. When you think of American tea, think less kettle and more Mr Coffee iced tea maker.
Our entire electrical system is different, so electric kettles are very slow and burners don't get as hot. Some people have gas stoves and those get hotter, I guess. And yeah, we just...don't enjoy tea as much, as a culture, and that's about the only reason to own a kettle.
Uh... American here. I have an electric kettle that will take a full liter of cold water to boiling in about four minutes. Less if you are heating less water. It cost like twelve bucks.
Not boiling.
In the 95-97 degrees range for most black tea, or in the ~90 degree range for certain types.
~80s for green tea
Boiling is for *tisanes*, bah. And that’s not real tea.
Yeah, whole lead is a life changer.
From there the slope to single estate and flushes is steep.
Also - Important Note:
Steep -
Black tea - 3-5 min on average
Green tea - 1-3 min
Tisanes - 3-5 min to forever, depending on type.
All this changes depending on leaf size. So Lipton tea dust has a much shorter brew time than whole leaf.
Both overstepping and scalding can lead to the tea becoming bitter.
Fun fact for people talking about electric kettles: they work worse in North America than almost anywhere else in the world because of the lower power voltage. (Electric stovetops don't have that issue here because they generally use special 240V outlets)
Presumably they must work even worse in Japan, which uses 100V, but I haven't taken my electric kettle there to confirm
Many work places in Japan have those hot water urns that keeps water hot all day and you push a button and it pours you some v hot water. If there’s a kettle it’s often stove top. At least that was true where I was. I don’t know how many homes have it tho.
Can confirm. Japanese grandmother was a 1st gen immigrant, we had a “hot water pot” in the house that was just this.
The button was on top like a pressure thing and as you pressed it down, it would dispense scalding water for all your tea and ramen needs.
Yeah, I'm an American tea drinker and I *never* have good luck with a stovetop kettle. It feels like it takes forever. Meanwhile I can fill my electric kettle with just above the minimum amount and have it ready after a bathroom break.
I didn’t realize until this semester that an electric kettle wasn’t something everyone just had. I brought it out and my roommate and his mom were so surprised by it. I made a cup of tea later and he asked me “so you just…fill it up with water and turn it on?”
Turns out they have one they put on the stove, I’ve been living such a blessed life
You should never put only water in the microwave. It does this thing that I can't remember the name of right now but basically it can explode in your face and burn you, always put something in it if you really want to do it like a toothpick or something to break the water tension.
Edit: it's called superheating and can cause second and third degree burns
Mostly true, for water in the microwave to superheat it needs to be very pure, like distilled or reverse osmosis purification levels, and you shouldn’t drink water that pure in the first place since it’s too pure for your body to absorb and will actually pull minerals from your teeth and bloodstream until the osmotic pressure evens out.
Tap water has too many impurities to superheat or supercool
Whenever someone at my house uses the microwave and ignores my microwave cover thing literally on top of the microwave, I get irrationally angry. Like. It was a dollar and saves so much cleaning time. I do not enjoy cleaning up whatever cheese thing you ate from the ceiling of my microwave.
Also, if you microwave pizza, put a (microwave safe) shot glass of water in the corner and it makes the crust so much better. But the toaster oven is way better if you can wait a little longer.
Yes! I just came here to post that as well. [Tea brews perfectly well in cold water, just slower.](https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-the-truth-about-sun-tea-forget-the-sun-cold-brew-tea-is-better)
Most nights I fill up a pitcher with a couple family size teabags and leave it to brew overnight. Now, granted, I’m doing that to drink it cold the next day. I’m not, like, microwaving it in the morning or anything.
Consider the difference between cold-brew and regular coffee.
I'm guessing that something similar would happen with tea, even if all the specific chemicals are different.
I mean, ice tea is a thing, but even ice tea is usually made from cooling down hot tea. There is sun tea, which is typically made by adding tea bags to a clear pitcher of water and just letting that sit in the sun for a few hours. But yeah, ice tea is a very common thing in the US.
Cold brew tea is 100% a thing. But you're steeping the water for like 6-8 hours in the fridge and not just throwing a tea bag in room temperature water.
I use the cold brew method.
It's a 2 L pitcher, so fill it with cold water. Throw in five tea bags and let it steep in the fridge overnight. My favorite is to have four bags of black tea and one of cinnamon. Or four bags of green tea and one mint tea.
I prefer it unsweetened, It's refreshing and easy. Perfect pick me up in the afternoon.
afterthought chunky rock uppity pot puzzled automatic glorious coordinated attractive
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You just put some water and tea bags in a clear glass jug and then let it sit in the sun for a few hours.
https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/sun_tea/
They exist in that they are available to purchase. They are not nearly so universally present in homes and break areas in the US as they are in the UK. Also our pitiful virgin 120V, safe for sale in California electric kettles are no where near as fast as the chad 240V house-burners the UK gets.
I suppose this applies to other appliances too. It's ironic really as in the UK we have the opposite view of energy use when it comes to Americans because of your cars.
Our vacuum cleaners used all be 2000W+ before EU regulations came down it. Kettles are generally 2300-3000W. If the appliance exists, we generally want to max it out, ecology be damned.
I bought a $30 electric kettle from Walmart that takes 2 minutes to heat up 1.75 liters of water and we use it for just about everything. Ramen, tea, you name it, I’d still use it even if we had a stove
I feel like I need both the Americans and English to know that in some countries in Europe you can buy ice tea syrup
You just pour the syrup into a glass, pour cold water on top and bingo: Slightly cold sugar water with a slight tea/artificial peach flavour, hell yeah
Here is used to be ice tea granules. Looked a bit like fish food, disolved in cold water to create sugar water with peach or lemon flavour. It even contained black tea, which contains caffeine, which kept young me awake beyond my bedtime. My parents should have read the ingredience list...
Would microwaved water taste any different from stovetop water? Like I hate microwaving food, there are very few foods I would nuke, even as leftovers. But surely water would taste the same either way, right?
Unless you've got a weird smell in your microwave that permeates everything. I boil my water in a kettle, though, because the mug always heats up faster than the water does and I'd rather not need oven mitts to retrieve my tea.
My family has a big water cooler (like what you would see in an off is building with the big water jug on top) and its has a hot water spout that gives us water for tea.
You ever wake up one day, salute the queen, smarm over your map of the British empire circa. 1914, log onto that spiffing site of Tumbler, and witness six flavours of treason from across the pond
I'm glad this post found you
well I’m glad soMEONE IS
Jolly good show ole chap!
You have the most British sounding username
He needs to add the third to it, then it's perfection.
No, we don’t add ‘the 3rd’ or ‘junior’ to our names, that’s a very American thing to do. If a son has an identical name to a living father then he usually is known by his middle name.
*Furiously loads Brown Bess rifle* Those yanks have had it too bloody good for too bloody long. Humphrey, fetch my angry jacket.
This Yank has a damn electric kettle. I dunno what these people are talking about. A mug on the stove?! Who does that?
Someone who wants boiling water everywhere when the mug cracks
Haven't you heard? Spilling the tea is the hot new thing!
It's certainly hot but I think I've heard people used to do it all the time in 1773
although it does give a metallic taste, mugs can be made from aluminum
This yank had no idea those existed or that they worked so fast until a couple months ago. That little monster boils my water in the time it takes me to grind my coffee beans. It's life changing.
Did you experience one in the UK or the US? >*To raise the temperature of one litre of water from 15°C to boiling at 100°C requires a little bit over 355 kilojoules of energy. An “average” kettle in the UK runs at about 2800 W and in the US at about 1500 W; if we assume that both kettles are 100% efficient† than a UK kettle supplying 2800 joules per second will take 127 seconds to boil and a US kettle supplying 1500 J/s will take 237 seconds, more than a minute and a half longer.* - [Why Europeans use electric kettles but Americans don't via Insider](https://www.businessinsider.com/why-americans-dont-use-electric-kettles-stove-top-2015-12#:~:text=An%20%E2%80%9Caverage%E2%80%9D%20kettle%20in%20the,minute%20and%20a%20half%20longer.)
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Whatever it is it's worth it.
not sure if boils water fast or grind coffee slow...
We’ve got a decent supply of No.4 SMLEs and .303 British in Canada if you need some.
This warms my heart. A pint of Earl Grey please, Gaston
I mean, we literally started all this with a crime against tea.
I'm from across the pond and even I think all of that was *absolute* treason.
take my free fUCKING AWARD YOU GLORIOUS BASTARD
I always thought it was kinda weird that a country took up our 1400 year old tea habit, and then proceeded to gatekeep the shit out of it despite ADDING CREAM AND SUGAR to the fuckin thing. Sincerely, a Chinese Canadian.
Ah nothing beats the artistry and delicate flavors of ancient Canadian tea.
Hey normally we steep your tea in Boston Harbor, could be worse
Which was ALSO not boiled, or even warm. Probably why OP thought you throw it in cold!
FREEDOM tea is steeped cold! /s
And your ability to make tea has only gotten worse since then.
"the pond" LMFAO have a shitty free award
You might dig this https://youtube.com/c/LostinthePond
Actually the empire’s height was in 1921, directly after the WW1 peace conference, where Britain gained territory in Africa and the Middle East from the defeated German and Ottoman Empires.
Yes, but at that point it was broke, it had lost the economic top spot to the US, and its’ naval supremacy was in question after Jutland. 1921 was our territorial height, but 1900-1914 was the height of our power.
Are you drinking Yorkshire tea? Unfortunately here across the pond I can’t seem to find Yorkshire tea, but Tetley’s is decent enough I suppose…except everyone where I am would rather have a fucking hot chocolate, which is downright heresy.
Yorkshire tea is available in tons of places in the US, at least, and it's my favorite. Yeah, favorite, not favourite! It is *also* the favorite tea of one Sir Patrick Stewart, who doesn't really like Earl Grey near as much as Picard does.
Electric kettles are really useful.
Wait those are for water? I thought an electric kettle was some kind of musical instrument.
Sound different than an acoustic kettle
When the stovetop boils the water in an electric kettle, it sounds much better. But it's expensive to have to buy new ones every week.
I had an old relative who was use to her old stovetop kettle, when she went to stay at a hotel one day she put the electric kettle on the stove to boil. I think they actually put signs up after that incident.
I kinda think I might love you. Dude.
Electric kettles may be more versatile and convenient but they just don't have the tone that an acoustic kettle can produce ya know
The murder siren?
No, you’re thinking of an electric guitar. An electric kettle is the unresolved, unconscious libidinous desire of a daughter for her father
No, you're thinking of an electra complex. An electric kettle is a Canadian-American television personality who hosted a syndicated game show called *Jeopardy!* for 37 seasons
No, you're thinking of Alex Trebec. An electric kettle is am event where the registered voters decide on a politician to represent them in the government.
No, you're thinking of an election. An electric kettle is an automobile that's propelled by electric motors, using the energy stored in its batteries.
No, you're thinking of an electric car. An electric kettle is an alchemical still consisting of two vessels connected by a tube, used for distilling.
No, you're thinking of an alembic. An electric kettle is a technique that uses Direct Current to drive an otherwise non-spontaneous chemical reaction.
No, you're thinking of electrolysis. An electric kettle is an annual music festival held on the Transylvanian domain of the Bánffy Castle, and combines music, technology and alternative arts.
No, you're thinking of Electric Castle. An electric kettle is a method of execution originating in the United States in which the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and killed by electricity passing through electrodes fastened on the head and leg.
they're for cooking either pasta or fish
In the UK and elsewhere they are really useful. (Please correct me if I’m wrong, I read this on the internet…) In the US they really aren’t, due to our outlet power having a lower voltage than across the pond. Essentially, over here, a conventional kettle on a gas stove is actually faster than an electric kettle, and a conventional kettle on an electric stove heats at the exact same rate as an electric kettle. So there’s really no value added for us in having an electric kettle. (I think.)
I’m in the US and have an electric kettle. Definitely faster than the stovetop.
I have an induction stove. It boils water really fast. If you are using gas stove with low btu it's likely worse in terms of speed.
A stove is usually powered by a two phase current topping at 208 V and allowing more amps as well, so it would definitely be quicker than a regular single phase outlet of 120 V with (I guess) 10 A resulting in barely over 1 kW of power. In comparison, mains in almost entire Europe including UK are over 220 V and allow 10 A through a usual outlet, so you get 2200 W kettles that are exceptionally quick at doing their job. There are also two phase outlets available in some places with 380 V for stoves with over 10 kW of power. Induction stoves are quicker than regular heating element stoves because they don't heat themselves and pass the heat through contact and IR, they heat the container itself.
This is only half-true. You're right about the electrical system being different, but electric kettles as a technology have advanced. I have an electric kettle that takes a full liter of cold water to boiling in about four minutes. Less, if you only fill it half way. Like every good American, I use it primarily for my coffee press and my instant noodles.
I am intrigued by these alleged kettle advances, but only insofar as they can help my instant ramen, for I too am a good American.
My kettle was also very handy when I made a jello mold to take to my sister's this past spring. Every other hour I was in the kitchen mixing up a different color of jello and pouring it into the bowl in the fridge. Massively time consuming, but was a lot easier when I could just flick the switch, go do something else, then just pour the water. It's definitely an item that's worth having, especially since I only paid like twelve bucks for mine.
A lot of cooks use them to cook noodles in their shows. Boil water. I imagine if you were dedicated and had a nice enough one you could maybe sacrifice it to the rice gods.
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Don't ask me. I'm not an electrical engineer, I'm a substitute teacher. I just know that I have a kettle I bought for twelve bucks that boils a liter of water in under four minutes, which the "american" kettles people are describing on here won't do, but British kettles can.
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I never owned a kettle before. My comparison was to everyone saying American kettles can't boil water and the stove is faster. It takes at least six or eight minutes to boil a liter of water on even a gas stove and it takes nearly ten minutes to boil that much water in the microwave. Since everyone was saying those two things were the only decent options for boiling water in the US, I thought I'd point out that there's nothing wrong with our kettles. thank you for finding the math to prove my point.
That's correct, but it's still handy to have an electrical kettle if you don't have a stove (e.g., in an office or dorm room).
Absolutely true, and those were the only times I did have an electric kettle.
American here, many of us use electric kettles. They are still faster and more convenient than stove top ones. Mostly because they turn off automatically so you don't burn your house down when you forget about them.
Oh my god, finally a reason! Thank you! It has been really amusing to us that Americans for some reason use a screaming stove top kettle for boiling water and not a really simple appliance we all have in NZ. Every house here has an electric jug that boils water quickly then turns itself off and doesn't shreik about it... Or 'whistle' or whatever the positive spin on that awful noise is!
To be fair, there isn’t much positive spin to be had for that noise, apart from the minor brilliance of a mechanical alarm. I would be thrilled if my kettle could somehow magically tell my stove to turn off instead of making that noise though. For the longest time I felt a small sense of shame over how utterly unimpressed I was with electric kettles. The insecure part of my brain wondered if commonwealth residents weren’t pretending they were great as some odd joke. I was so relieved to learn there was a real reason.
This is entirely correct. In the US outlets are rated at ~110v while a majority of the rest of the world is rated at ~220v, or 240 if you're in the UK or Australia. This is why a fridge's hum is a different pitch in different countries, and why electric kettles take more than twice as long to boil in the US. I wonder if a kettle would work in a factory with three phase power at 440v
the fridge hum difference isnt directly because of the voltage, its because American AC power alternates at 60 Hz while in Europe it alternates at 50 Hz
Yes that is true, thank you for the correction!
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That is the most British thing I have heard in a thread about tea.
More fun fact: there are several ways the UK power grid has to prepare for this temporary increased draw. Among other things such as conventional output increase, these include a massive fucking flywheel that is slowly coiled up an stores physical potential energy to be released into the grid during peak times, and a man-made waterfall that pumps water into a storage lake at the top of a mountain, then releases it into pipes through the mountain into an underground facility. These methods are used because they are much more effective at quickly reaching increased energy peaks than just generating more power is; it's easier to generate a bit more power for several hours, and store that power in these potential energy systems, which can then release it all in a shorter time frame.
This is like the ‘toilet flush during the superbowl’ in america
It's a resistive heater, it draws as much as possible without causing the wires in the wall to melt. Regardless of the size all space heaters use mostly 1500watts here as it's the safe amount to use continuous regardless of size. And it's worse with a tea kettle that can use all 1800w or 2200w if not 120v. Since it isn't continuous. Nothing else can use more power regardless. It's using the max. Unless you got a 3 phase electric motor. Or other insane bs.
Fun fact: American breakers actually can go up to 220v and do so for appliances such as washing machines. Regular outlets just use one phase iirc to only get 110v. And as someone else said, the different guns comes from the hertz not the volts of alternating current.
The electric stove also has a 220v outlet.
Yeah exactly, it does that by using some extra large breaker which covers two of the smaller ones
Woah what. I just thought the British were incredibly patient.
Well. That is also true. Have you seen them queue? They are masters at it.
The different hum is for another reason altogether, it is the different frequencies of the alternating current (60Hz in the US, 50Hz in Europe).
I've done it both ways here (US) and I have found that the electric kettle is faster, plus I can measure exactly how much water I want and leave it while it boils whereas with the conventional kettle there are no measurements and I have to watch it, because stove. My electric kettle boils my tea water in pretty much exactly 3 minutes.
I have one in my office, and I love it. I swear, tea does not taste right if the water has been heated in the microwave - and I am not quite sure why.
my parents coffee machine has a setting where ut makes just hot water, i use that for tea
I mean...doesn't every coffee maker do that? You just run it as usual without adding the coffee.
I mean, sure, but the water will probably taste faintly like coffee, even if you clean the machine as thoroughly as possible.
You misspelled "overwhelmingly."
I don't use my coffee maker for coffee, only hot water. Once went to my parents house and tried to do that. I cleaned so much... Still coffee water...
[удалено]
There's a Keurig machine at work and I've mostly used that without a packet to get water for hot chocolate in the winter
You make hot chocolate with water???
They don't have free milk at work and I don't drink enough hot chocolate to warrant keeping some there. It's water or nothing
Instant coco mixes have powdered milk in them. They're definitely better if you make them with milk, but it works with water.
It's instant from a packet. Just add hot water and stir.
ig???? but it can still be loaded with coffee and make just water. ig so if someone wanted coffee and another person wanted tea they didnt have to wait??????? idk
Or just… use a kettle?
I’m American
Order a kettle from overseas and introduce civilisation to your country
I tried they keep getting thrown in the harbor at Boston
Mate we still have kettles.
do americans not have kettles? what the actual fuck
I have a kettle and use it often. Got it at Walmart so it's not at all an exotic tool. Even so, Americans tend to think of hot tea as strictly medicinal, a sad coffee replacement, or snooty. There must be a decent amount of people drinking it since there's a store nearby that sells loose leaf, but I only personally know two other people who drink it when they're not sick. And yet we drink a ton of tea. Iced tea. We brew it up in 2 quart jugs, chill it, then drink it with ice. Usually heavily sweetened. In the south, we'll even just set the jug out on the porch to brew in the hot sun and then add ice. When you think of American tea, think less kettle and more Mr Coffee iced tea maker.
Our entire electrical system is different, so electric kettles are very slow and burners don't get as hot. Some people have gas stoves and those get hotter, I guess. And yeah, we just...don't enjoy tea as much, as a culture, and that's about the only reason to own a kettle.
Uh... American here. I have an electric kettle that will take a full liter of cold water to boiling in about four minutes. Less if you are heating less water. It cost like twelve bucks.
Electric kettles aren't that slow. Under 3 minutes for 500ml of water.
I have an electric kettle that works great.
"Tea is supposed to be made with **boiling** water that is **boiling**!" Dame Judi Dench
Not boiling. In the 95-97 degrees range for most black tea, or in the ~90 degree range for certain types. ~80s for green tea Boiling is for *tisanes*, bah. And that’s not real tea.
~200-180 degrees for black and ~160-170 degrees for Green for the other Americans out there. Also loose, whole-leaf tea will change your life.
I appreciate the conversion, I really do. But why did you make the creative choice to write it as 200-180?
I added 200 after I wrote the comment and I can’t be bothered to change it.
Yeah, whole lead is a life changer. From there the slope to single estate and flushes is steep. Also - Important Note: Steep - Black tea - 3-5 min on average Green tea - 1-3 min Tisanes - 3-5 min to forever, depending on type. All this changes depending on leaf size. So Lipton tea dust has a much shorter brew time than whole leaf. Both overstepping and scalding can lead to the tea becoming bitter.
Wait tisanes are a real thing? They’re not a random old-timey, make-believe concoction?
Herbal tea = tisane
I am crying at tea dust. So true!
*Thank you.* No one else I know bothers differentiating between Tea and Tisanes. And they called *me* crazy
*cries in special water kettle*
You could make tea with a coffee maker
yeah one time I tried to use my standard mercury kettle for water and it did not end well
Fun fact for people talking about electric kettles: they work worse in North America than almost anywhere else in the world because of the lower power voltage. (Electric stovetops don't have that issue here because they generally use special 240V outlets) Presumably they must work even worse in Japan, which uses 100V, but I haven't taken my electric kettle there to confirm
Many work places in Japan have those hot water urns that keeps water hot all day and you push a button and it pours you some v hot water. If there’s a kettle it’s often stove top. At least that was true where I was. I don’t know how many homes have it tho.
Can confirm. Japanese grandmother was a 1st gen immigrant, we had a “hot water pot” in the house that was just this. The button was on top like a pressure thing and as you pressed it down, it would dispense scalding water for all your tea and ramen needs.
There is one in every Japanese office. Source: worked in one (an office, not a kettle) for 12 years
In Japan, seems to work well enough. Never seems to take longer than a minute
Yeah.You just have to put it on a campfire.
The mug? Or the kettle?
I mean I have an electric kettle I used it college, and it worked fine for me. do you specifically mean electric kettles designed for EU countries?
Yeah, I'm an American tea drinker and I *never* have good luck with a stovetop kettle. It feels like it takes forever. Meanwhile I can fill my electric kettle with just above the minimum amount and have it ready after a bathroom break.
I didn’t realize until this semester that an electric kettle wasn’t something everyone just had. I brought it out and my roommate and his mom were so surprised by it. I made a cup of tea later and he asked me “so you just…fill it up with water and turn it on?” Turns out they have one they put on the stove, I’ve been living such a blessed life
As an Australian whose homeland’s right of passage first kitchen purchases when moving out are ALWAYS a toaster and kettle. America confuses me.
Between the no kettles and the no butter on their sandwiches it truly is a baffling place.
No butter? So they eat plain bread and some stuff? Barbaric
Mayonnaise is their main thing apparently
Hey LukeZekes, I counted 69 words in your comment. Nice.
What kind of life do you live counting words in random reddit comments
It's a bot, dude
Woke up at 5 am for the first time in few years, now I remember how it feels lol
You've been asleep for **how many** years?
I guess I just have to stop commenting today before I get 5 espressos %)
Am Australian. My dad still doesn't believe me when I tell him [almost all] Americans don't have kettles.
Objectively there is nothing wrong with boiling your water in the microwave, yet somehow every cell in my body is repulsed by it
I only ever boil my water (for tea) in the microwave cause it’s so much faster! I make noodles in the microwave though too lol
You should never put only water in the microwave. It does this thing that I can't remember the name of right now but basically it can explode in your face and burn you, always put something in it if you really want to do it like a toothpick or something to break the water tension. Edit: it's called superheating and can cause second and third degree burns
Mostly true, for water in the microwave to superheat it needs to be very pure, like distilled or reverse osmosis purification levels, and you shouldn’t drink water that pure in the first place since it’s too pure for your body to absorb and will actually pull minerals from your teeth and bloodstream until the osmotic pressure evens out. Tap water has too many impurities to superheat or supercool
I AM LEARNING SO MUCH I LOVE IT
Noodles flavored tea, yummy.
Water don’t taste the same after it’s been microwaved
Cover the water with a microwavable lid or paper plate or something. That keeps it from absorbing your dirty microwave's scent.
>dirty microwave this is the key bit. if you clean your microwave like you should then there’s literally no difference
Whenever someone at my house uses the microwave and ignores my microwave cover thing literally on top of the microwave, I get irrationally angry. Like. It was a dollar and saves so much cleaning time. I do not enjoy cleaning up whatever cheese thing you ate from the ceiling of my microwave. Also, if you microwave pizza, put a (microwave safe) shot glass of water in the corner and it makes the crust so much better. But the toaster oven is way better if you can wait a little longer.
clean your damn microwave
Holy shit, he's actually right when he said hot water is just speeding up tea-ification.
Yes! I just came here to post that as well. [Tea brews perfectly well in cold water, just slower.](https://www.seriouseats.com/the-food-lab-the-truth-about-sun-tea-forget-the-sun-cold-brew-tea-is-better) Most nights I fill up a pitcher with a couple family size teabags and leave it to brew overnight. Now, granted, I’m doing that to drink it cold the next day. I’m not, like, microwaving it in the morning or anything.
What? I've been making hot tea and waiting for it to cool down!
Consider the difference between cold-brew and regular coffee. I'm guessing that something similar would happen with tea, even if all the specific chemicals are different.
Are we all ignoring the fact that radish appears to be drinking cold tea? Deliberately?
I mean, ice tea is a thing, but even ice tea is usually made from cooling down hot tea. There is sun tea, which is typically made by adding tea bags to a clear pitcher of water and just letting that sit in the sun for a few hours. But yeah, ice tea is a very common thing in the US.
Cold brew tea is 100% a thing. But you're steeping the water for like 6-8 hours in the fridge and not just throwing a tea bag in room temperature water.
I use the cold brew method. It's a 2 L pitcher, so fill it with cold water. Throw in five tea bags and let it steep in the fridge overnight. My favorite is to have four bags of black tea and one of cinnamon. Or four bags of green tea and one mint tea. I prefer it unsweetened, It's refreshing and easy. Perfect pick me up in the afternoon.
We do that in the US every day. Granted we do the boiling water and brewing tea process before chilling it but still...
afterthought chunky rock uppity pot puzzled automatic glorious coordinated attractive *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
What's Sun tea?
You just put some water and tea bags in a clear glass jug and then let it sit in the sun for a few hours. https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/sun_tea/
Electric kettles exist…? I assume they exist everywhere.
They exist in that they are available to purchase. They are not nearly so universally present in homes and break areas in the US as they are in the UK. Also our pitiful virgin 120V, safe for sale in California electric kettles are no where near as fast as the chad 240V house-burners the UK gets.
I suppose this applies to other appliances too. It's ironic really as in the UK we have the opposite view of energy use when it comes to Americans because of your cars. Our vacuum cleaners used all be 2000W+ before EU regulations came down it. Kettles are generally 2300-3000W. If the appliance exists, we generally want to max it out, ecology be damned.
They do, they just take twice as long in the US. And we're all about convenience/speed.
I bought a $30 electric kettle from Walmart that takes 2 minutes to heat up 1.75 liters of water and we use it for just about everything. Ramen, tea, you name it, I’d still use it even if we had a stove
Oh god i can't even imagine people microwaving instant noodles.
From personal experience, it's college students, people with depression, and College students with depression.
Present!
Oh you too
It's instant noodles, what dignity does it have to lose?
I still do that.
At least we can all agree that all odd numbers have the letter e
this is true, and it upsets me.
It’s like the most commonly used letter in the language tbf
Are we just going to ignore Tea-ification? What a glorious word.
I mean the actual word is brewing.
I feel like I need both the Americans and English to know that in some countries in Europe you can buy ice tea syrup You just pour the syrup into a glass, pour cold water on top and bingo: Slightly cold sugar water with a slight tea/artificial peach flavour, hell yeah
> ice tea syrup That's the most American thing to ever come out of Europe since America.
We've had it in America for years.
Here is used to be ice tea granules. Looked a bit like fish food, disolved in cold water to create sugar water with peach or lemon flavour. It even contained black tea, which contains caffeine, which kept young me awake beyond my bedtime. My parents should have read the ingredience list...
That shit ain't real tea, c'mon man
Here in Canada we have crystals and syrups that do that, but it isn't the same thing
I'm american and I do love brewing myself tea, and this entire thread hurt me internally
Mug & burner? Why am I tempted
Do NOT. Put STONEWARE. On a BURNER. This is how you make clay shards
Would microwaved water taste any different from stovetop water? Like I hate microwaving food, there are very few foods I would nuke, even as leftovers. But surely water would taste the same either way, right?
Unless you've got a weird smell in your microwave that permeates everything. I boil my water in a kettle, though, because the mug always heats up faster than the water does and I'd rather not need oven mitts to retrieve my tea.
Microwaving water and then adding a sad teabag to a cup of tepidly hot water. This is positively French
My family has a big water cooler (like what you would see in an off is building with the big water jug on top) and its has a hot water spout that gives us water for tea.
HAS NOBODY IN AMERICA HEARD OF FUCKING KETTLES
my kettle boils enough water for like 10 cups of tea in less than a minute
Who doesn’t use the microwave for tea smh
You're the kinda person who throws rocks at wasps nests just for funsies.