I don't have a comparison to a kettle because I don't have one, but our Quooker tap took a fraction of a kWh over a couple of months that I measured the energy usage, and my wife uses it daily for tea and we use it most days for boiling water for things like cooking.

The 3L tank that holds the hot water, under the sink is well insulated and it takes almost nothing to keep it at temperature.

Given that it uses such negligible energy that I needn't care, the benefits of instant boiling water whenever we like and not having an extra appliance no the counter-top make it a clear winner for us.

Interesting, thanks. I really like the idea but the thing I'd miss from our kettle is the ability to change to lower temperatures for different kinds of tea. You shouldn't really use boiling water for some kinds of green tea, for example. I guess you can mix in some cold water to reach close to the right temperature, but I'd miss the convenience.

I've never come across a kettle that changes temperature, or is it that you can stop it boiling when you feel it's about right?

My wife drinks tea (I'm a coffee drinker) and I make tea (just simple, English Breakfast with milk) for her quite often, and we both use it for cooking. It was something she'd always wanted, and she's not much into "gadgets" but she's been very happy with this, so I'm happy.

We have an earlier version of this: https://www.bosch-home.co.uk/en/mkt-product/food-preparation...

The only annoying thing about it is that the fill indicator is rather hidden by the handle, but otherwise we really like it.

Ah that looks cool, got a sort of retro-coffee filter machine for the office look to it too (I love Bosch appliances).

I never understood why so many kettles always put the fill indicator behind the handle, which of course you'd be holding when filling it up. The first time I saw one with a large, clearly graduated window on the side (and wasn't also a cheap, white plastic kettle) I was impressed, being the nerd I am.

> I've never come across a kettle that changes temperature, or is it that you can stop it boiling when you feel it's about right?

There's several around - I've got one that allows you to choose between 70°C, 80°C, 90°C and boiling (along with a keep-warm option that's never used). I use the 80°C option all the time for making coffee (Aeropress) and use the 70°C for things like green tea (black tea should be 100°C of course).

It's a mistake to use boiling water when making coffee - it'll extract a bitter flavour.

> I've got one that allows you to choose between 70°C, 80°C, 90°C

That's really cool, I suppose I haven't really looked, being a coffee drinker, a kettle was never important to me.

> It's a mistake to use boiling water when making coffee - it'll extract a bitter flavour.

I have two espresso machines, one in the kitchen and one in my home office, I also have an Aeropress like yourself, love it, but I only use that for travelling. Wouldn't dare pour boiling water over my freshly ground coffee :)

I've got the OXO adjustable temp one. It lets you select a temperature between 40 and 100 °C in one degree increments. I wish it were a bit smaller and could heat to a lower temp (for e.g. proofing yeast), but otherwise it's pretty nice. As it's an American market product it's limited to 1500W, which is still pretty quick but nowhere near the speed of something designed for 240V mains.

The biggest problem I've had so far was that Amazon seems to only stock used/counterfeit units. Buying direct from OXO got me on that hadn't been used and didn't reek of volatile organic compounds on the first try.

> The biggest problem I've had so far was that Amazon seems to only stock used/counterfeit units. Buying direct from OXO got me on that hadn't been used and didn't reek of volatile organic compounds on the first try.

This is slighly terrifying; and interesting that something like this would be counterfeited. I too would make any and all efforts to ensure I was using something legit where mains (240V for me) are concerned.

I once bought a knock-off hot-air soldering station without knowing, and once I looked into it, people were complaining they'd received units where the live was "grounded" to the case.

I opened mine to check, not quite as bad, but the live in mine wasn't attached to the metal case, just bare, and within about 1cm of it. I reported it to the retailer (we all know which major online retailer this was), and they did nothing. Let's just say things changed, seriously, for me that day when it comes to buying anything mains powered with uncertain origins.

This may have been the tipping point for me. I got two from Amazon. One was obviously used and had lots of hard water deposits. The other had a very strong VOC odor to it. Around this time I'd started looking more closely at items purchased from Amazon and they'd often appear to be lower quality (if not blatantly counterfeit). Even if I didn't despise Bezos this would've put me off Amazon.

ThermoWorks refused to sell their products on Amazon for quite a while. Apparently they've changed their stance but I wouldn't risk it.

Anyways the kettle is nice to have that I use daily for coffee even though I now have an induction stove with burners that are far more powerful than the kettle. Stateside, circuits for electric ranges are 240V, 50A (occasionally 40A on older buildings).

    > Even if I didn't despise Bezos

Why do despise him?

Probably due to him making a fortune by exploiting and underpaying his employees. His workers are reduced to pissing into bottles to save time whilst Bezos is mucking around flying in space.

The Bonavita kettle lets you set in 1 def F (or C, if you prefer) increments, with some common presets. I've used it for making Chinese tea for years.

When I was trying out my friends' boiling water tap, I had to much around with putting in some cold water into the Aeropress first, before then adding the boiling water. If I had to use one for longer than a weekend, I'd probably use a small jug for mixing the water to the right temperature first.

Very good point, it's good for when you want water at that specific temperature but could end up being an inconvenience depending on how you intend to use it. I have a few different thermermometers in the kitchen, plus a laser one and my Pixel now has one (for some unknown reason) so I use those to check the temps of things in the kitchen when I need to know.

Hot drinks can be a bit of a ritual, as I'm sure you understand as an aeropress user, so I don't mind a bit of work to get the right brew if I need to do it, in fact one of the things I enjoy about taking my aeropress when I'm travelling whether camping or any other break, is having my coffee ritual with me.

<opinion>

This problem is solved in its entirety by simply microwaving a cup of water. No wasted water.

If the same / similar cup is used, one can choose the desired temperature of the resultant hot water simply by varying the time. Seasonal variation of ambient water temperature may need to be taken into account.

I tend not to drink coffee, and I prefer to make tea with less-than-boiling water.

YMMV

</opinion.

Now that I’ve written that, I’ll have to put a power meter on the microwave and a kettle and report back with the results. My kettle recently broke and I hadn’t intended to replace.

I'd guess that a microwave would "waste" more energy as it's got moving parts and the energy isn't completely directed to heating the water. A kettle also "wastes" some energy as you end up heating the kettle too (from the hot water).

If a microwave was more efficient, I'd expect to see premium kettles that used microwaves instead of a simple heating element, though maybe there'd be design problems with preventing leaking microwaves.

Agree, at least to some extent.

For my use cases, I’m not looking to actually boil the water, bringing it up to 80 plus degrees suffices.

The inefficiency kettles bring is the tendency of certain users to heat way more water than their immediate needs.

I've tried that, and there are two problems. One is that water has a tendency to superheat and then boil all over the place when you put the tea in, or it suddenly produces a big bubble and water goes everywhere. The other is that it is hard to get a consistent temperature. Even if you measure it with a thermometer it seems problematic (although perhaps the grocery store thermometers go out of calibration easily). If you're doing herbal tea it might not matter as much, but for something like Chinese green tea, it was always hit or miss. I bought the Bonavita kettle as soon as I found out about it, and now I always have consistent tea with no fuss or mess.

My daily driver, a flatbed Panasonic microwave, does a good enough job, but yeah actually boiling the water in a microwave is a recipe for a way too hot cup, and half the water boiling over.

220ml, regular ceramic mug, one minute forty, does what I need, but I’m not tea or coffee connoisseur, just a prole with a box of Twinings loose leaf.

Thanks for the kettle reference, I have been meaning to find a temperature controlled unit.

I recently picked up an inexpensive Thomson branded electric frypan with digital temperature and time controls, well impressed.