441155 Thu Sep 13 20:13:21 -0700 2007 11 41 Cookware 0 2940083 I have a electic hot water kettle that just died. A long time ago I had a Mrs. Tea or something like that that worked pretty well. I see there are a few electric tea makers on the market. Any of them any good? My husband and I are a 0 coffee couple and only drink tea. I'm guessing the best thing for me to do is just replace the water kettle but I do use it 90% of the time for making tea. Thanks. Thu Sep 13 20:13:21 -0700 2007 20054 Allfrog68 1 2940299 I would stick with the water kettle. If you like green tea, Adagio Tea sells a kettle with variable temperature control. If you drink a lot of tea I would recommend a Zojirushi water heater. They maintain the proper temp for as long as you'd like and they can be adjusted for various temeratures. Thu Sep 13 21:56:41 -0700 2007 2940083 62405 cheapertrick 2 2944936 I'm really unhappy with my Zojirushi water heater. The reason is the difficulty of adding and changing water. It's a heavy piece of equipment and there's no good way of dumping the water short of picking the whole thing up and sloshing it over to the sink. Plus it's difficult to use the hot water for anything other than tea, unlike a kettle where you can do anything you want with the water. An electric kettle is the way to go. At work we abuse the heck out of a Chef's Choice kettle and it's holding up well. http://www.amazon.com/Chefs-Choice-677-Cordless-Teakettle/dp/B0000E5IN3 Those Mrs. Tea things look like a bad idea. A roommate some years back had one tucked away collecting dust in the back of the pantry. No one in the (very tea-positive) house *ever* thought of using it. Get a nice teapot and a timer and you'll be much happier. Sat Sep 15 16:22:20 -0700 2007 2940299 25310 Chuckles the Clone 3 2957840 I, on the other hand, love my Tiger, and constantly recommend electric hot pots to people who love tea. Why would you ever need to dump your water? I only ever put in my softened reverse/osmosis water - I never have to worry about sour water, scaling or build-up of any sort. I just keep putting water into it as I use it, and have never emptied it in the last 3-4 years. I use a clean glass carafe to bring the water from the R/O unit to the hot pot. I find that I can use the water for instant soups - my kids make their cuponoodles or instant vietnamese noodles - instant ochazuke - whatever... I make a 6-cup pot of tea every morning and sometimes a 2-cup pot later in the day. I have a Chatsworth pot with a fitted infuser as well as several Japanese tetsubin and red clay pots. Everything fits. Obviously, it's a matter of how you use hot water. But for millions of Asian households, the electric hot pot is an ideal product. Wed Sep 19 19:16:50 -0700 2007 2944936 10312 applehome 4 2957981 Three reasons, basically. First, it may be imaginary, but I like to make my tea with newly boiled water. If it's already boiled once and cooled, I don't like to reheat it. Second, I don't drink enough to justify the energy input to keep water hot. And third, and this is the main thing, I use an electric kettle to heat water for a lot of things besides tea. The most common is heating water before I throw it into a pot on the stove to cook pasta. The kettle heats it two or three times faster than the stove. Anytime I need hotter-than-the-tap water, which seems to be fairly often, I use the kettle. The tea-water-heater, since its main output is the little nozzle, is not good for this at all. Wed Sep 19 20:05:30 -0700 2007 2957840 25310 Chuckles the Clone 5 2961085 If you are changing your water after every boil and only boiling water for a teapot at a time, then it certainly makes more sense for you to have an electric kettle than a hot water pot. I don't think it uses that much more energy to keep my pot of hot water hot, so I just leave it full and plugged in. How big is your electric kettle? Doesn't it take a lot of water to cook pasta? http://threedogkitchen.com Thu Sep 20 15:58:09 -0700 2007 2957981 42944 leanneabe 6 2961878 It should be mentioned that because these are thermal pots that are completely sealed, any issues with the loss of dissolved oxygen that normally happens when leaving hot water sit out and then re-boiling would be moot. Millions of tea-loving Asians would not tolerate this device if it so negatively affected their daily drink. I would be hesitant to keep it undrained and unwashed over time if my water were not soft and well-filtered. But I would never use hard water for tea (if I could avoid it). I fill it and put it in the 6-hour sleep mode before going to bed - when I wake up, I can fill my teapot in seconds with boiled water. Leaving it on all day draws very little energy - it is a thermal pot and only recycles the element as needed - usually only as I add more water. Thu Sep 20 20:48:14 -0700 2007 2961085 10312 applehome 7 2962164 The tank would need to be pressurized in order to not drive off dissolved gasses. PV=nRT and p=kc and all. But it's not. You can easily measure the relative efficiencies. Fill your Zojirushi tank heater with room-temperature water. Heat to boiling. Pull the plug and time how long it takes to cool back down to room temperature. Suppose it takes two hours to cool. That means every two hours you're using the energy required to heat that volume of water from cool to boiling. Or equivalently, using a regular kettle to heat a gallon of water 12 times a day. (It's actually worse than this because heat loss is proportional to the difference in temperature between the heater and the surrounding air, but for the sake of simplicity we can assume it's constant.) But with a kettle, you're not heating a gallon. You only need to heat a little more than a cup. Which takes almost 16 times less energy to heat than a gallon (because it's 16 times less volume). As an experiment, I just timed how long it takes for the electric kettle to heat 12 oz of water from tap to boiling: 2 minutes 12 seconds. Since that's less time that it takes me to get the tea leaves and pot ready in the morning, I'm not losing any time with a kettle. Fri Sep 21 01:38:41 -0700 2007 2961878 25310 Chuckles the Clone 8 2962869 You may be right about the oxygen and pressure - but there may be other factors. It's not as if you're keeping it at a nucleate boil. And millions of Asians - yada yada... But I think your estimate of 2 hours to cool and therefore 12 times a day of full pot boiling is way too much. It's a thermal container - as efficient as any hot pot. To get the temp back down to tap would take much longer than 2 hours - it's probably closer to half the 12 times per day, and if you use the energy saving mode at night, even less. In any case, I think it is a matter of how you use it. If it fits your needs, it's convenient. The fact that you're loading and holding a thermal mass with a given potential amount of energy is obviously not free, but the trade off is that you aren't heating cold water with every cup. So somebody somewhere can crunch the numbers - time, energy, $$$... paper or plastic? Fri Sep 21 08:47:52 -0700 2007 2962164 10312 applehome 1 2949981 You would do better with an electric water kettle than a tea-making appliance. There are some fancy tea kettles that have a temperature control but I think it would be okay to let the water boil and then let it sit for a minute or two to cool down. Now, there's a difference between drinking only tea and drinking tea all the time. If you drink only tea, but only a couple times a day, I'd recommend the tea kettle. Most electric kettles boil water fairly quickly, so it would be ready by the time you get your cups, tea, and whatnot together. But, if you drink tea all the time, I'd recommend something like the Zojirushi water heater. It keeps water hot enough for tea (and most other things) all the time and there's a "boil" button in the event you need it boiling hot. I just plugged mine back in after the summer break, as I tend to drink hot tea all evening long as the weather gets colder. I like being able to push a button and have hot water ready instead of boiling it for every cup. Also, by the time I finish one cup of tea, water in a kettle would be cold again and require reboiling. Mine holds a little over 1 gallon of water. It is heavy when full, but when empty it's pretty light. I don't know why you'd need to change the water out often, unless you hardly used it. As for adding water, I open the lid and pour water in from either the Brita pitcher or a jug of water. No need to slosh water anywhere. As for the comment that it's hard to use water for anything but tea... to me it's the same as using hot water from a kettle. You put hot water into whatever cup you need it for. You could also dispense water directly into a bowl for instant soup, instant ramen, hot cocoa... http://threedogkitchen.com Mon Sep 17 15:32:52 -0700 2007 2940083 42944 leanneabe 1 2967389 They exist (I think Adagio makes / sells one), but as others have said, you really probably don't want / need one. It's not that hard to make tea well yourself, and it's hard for a machine to do it really well. My methods are a little more involved, but something like this should make you a decent cup of tea.... Start with good quality water (this is a very important bit) - without too much mineral content but not totally distilled either -- a low mineral spring water or filtered tap water with some of the minerals remaining should work well -- and good quality loose leaf tea. Preheat your brewing vessel and drinking cup(s). Put in the tea and do a quick rinse if you like; use boiling water for black (red) tea, boiling or slightly cooler for oolongs, and somewhat cooler for greens (4-5 minutes off the boil at least, maybe more for delicate ones). Let steep to desired strength and drink. Ultimately, you have to do a lot of that work yourself anyway, so a machine doesn't really help much. Ton of threads about kettles... a recent one @ http://www.chowhound.com/topics/439237 Sun Sep 23 02:44:30 -0700 2007 2940083 59830 will47 1 2970248 I have the older-model Adagio TriniTEA. Right now it's out of service...seems like it blew a fuse and it's got some kind of goofy screws on the bottom so I can't get it open without modifying a screwdriver and I don't have time for that nonsense. Anyway, I really liked it. I hooked it up to a lamp timer and at night I would load it up and in the morning there would be a fresh pot of tea waiting. If I had company over, I could make a pot of tea and a pot of coffee. It was nice to have. Kind of expensive, though. Mon Sep 24 08:57:57 -0700 2007 2940083 69452 jzerocsk