variable temperature kettle - good for coffee?

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variable temperature kettle - good for coffee?

Postby jon » Tue Oct 14, 2008 10:29 am

Been thinking about getting a kettle that will boil to a lower temp - it seems vaguely wasteful to boil water for coffee/tea, then let it cool. Something like the Morphy Richards 2perfection...

Sensible idea? Or does bringing water to boiling point benefit the flavour of the coffee?
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RE: variable temperature kettle - good for coffee?

Postby Neo » Tue Oct 14, 2008 12:52 pm

I don't boil my water to save some time, and the taste isn't affected, at least I cant tell the difference. However if you want to make sure the water is chlorine and germs free, boiling it should be better.
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RE: variable temperature kettle - good for coffee?

Postby Jasonscheltus » Sun Oct 19, 2008 9:33 pm

Boiling water won't get rid of the chlorine. And most of the bacteria that severely affect humans will be killed off before it hits your tap. For coffee, the amount of other "stuff" attached to the water seems to be more important. Using filtered water instead of tap water makes a huge difference to the taste in the cup, and how much stuff is filtered out of the water makes a difference.

There have been arguments against actually boiling the water before letting it cool (tea-heads have said that the amount of oxygen in the water has an affect on extraction of tea, and obviously the more you boil water the less O2 is in the water), but I have never experience the discrepancy.

Fixing a kettle to "not-boil" sounds like a sensible idea, I've been thinking about ways to do this too. I thought perhaps attaching one of Espresso Parts North West's La Marzocco PID kits to a standard water boiler would be a good idea, if not somewhat overkill. They're not cheap though, 150 quid if I remember, you can buy quite a few kettles with that money...

Kettles must have some kind of rudimentary thermostat (or pressure stat?), and I'd reckon that maybe some of these could be modified.

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RE: variable temperature kettle - good for coffee?

Postby petikas » Tue Oct 21, 2008 9:05 am

The Philips kettles HD4685 (1 litre) and HD4686 (1,5 litre) have four settings for the water temperature, 40C, 60C, 80C and 100C.
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RE: variable temperature kettle - good for coffee?

Postby jon » Fri Oct 24, 2008 6:06 pm

Thanks - hm, it seems hard to get the more adjustable kettles in the UK (though plenty in US) and I guess 80C is a bit cool for coffee...
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RE: variable temperature kettle - good for coffee?

Postby jon » Mon Oct 27, 2008 2:22 am

Annoyingly, as well as the Philips mentioned, there's a cheaper Kenwood kettle - Click Here. Again, just goes to 80/100 degrees, though :(

In the US they have 'utilitea' kettles, which look good. Not here, though.


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