Thatās not true and also itās not the reason. We just donāt drink a lot of tea. Thereās not a huge reason to own an electric kettle unless youāre drinking a lot of tea. Itās still much faster than a stovetop kettle.
My family (American) did drink a lot of tea. Surprise surprise, we had a kettle. I did not die of old age from the cumulative weight of all that waiting.
Not sure what you mean. Americans do brew hot coffee, but they generally donāt use a kettle to brew it. Hand-brewing methods like pour over are a very recent trend here. In my experience growing up, the vast majority of households used an electric drip coffee machine, or a stovetop percolator before they had electricity. Even now, when pour over and the aeropress are starting to get popular, Iād wager that a vast majority of households are still using a machine - either a drip machine or one of those pod machines - rather than a brewing method that requires a kettle.
Edit: found some stats on American home coffee brewing. Among Americans who brew coffee at home, 48% tend to use a drip machine, and 29% use a pod machine, neither of which requires a kettle. If we assume the entire pour over (5%) and French press (5%) market owns a kettle, and that the entire āotherā category (6%) owns a kettle (which seems very generous), thatās still only 16% of home coffee drinkers using a kettle. (Another 7% use an espresso machine or percolator, and I think the last 1% was lost to rounding.)
Drip machines make worse coffee and are more of a hassle than just dumping hot water into the filter holder all at once so Iāll chalk it up to abysmal US coffee culture combined with consumerism, then.
No it really wasnāt. āI donāt know much about their gridā means the next āitā in the comment is referring to ātheir gridā. No ambiguity to be had, friend.
Pretty much every person I know in Canada has an electric kettle and every single office Iāve worked in has one, my kitchen has 15a outlets which is still 1800W. I have a simple gooseneck kettle that I usw mainly for coffee, itās only 1kW and holds around 750ml, itās not blisteringly fast but itās boiled before Iāve ground my coffee.
The whole ā120v is holding us back from having kettlesā is way overblown (technology connections has a video on electric kettles).
1800W are not out of the ordinary for water cookers in Europe but thatās definitely on the weak side. 3000 to 3200 is usually the maximum, probably because pulling the full 3600W would drastically increase the chances of tripping a fuse. My food processor is 600W and I might want to make a coffee while kneading dough.
Have to drop the US number by 20% for continuous loads like a kettle would be.
That said, US homes built in the last 40 years or so tend to have a lot of separate circuits in the kitchen. My house has one for the fridge, one for the disposal, one for the dishwasher, one for the lights thatās shared with lights in adjacent areas, stove has its own 240V outlet, and then one for all the other plugs. If I ran the microwave and a kettle and a mixer all at once, Iād probably still trip it, but thatās a lot of multitasking going on.
If kettles were continuous loads weād have to reduce from 16A to 10A (2200W) or 8A (1800W). Schuko are rated for as little as 1h of 16A but for a kettle thatās plenty, theyāre done in a minute or two.
German stoves are connected to at least 2x10A, newer installations (as in since the 70s or such) all provide 3x16A. Not actually three-phase theyāre still 220V appliances. Whether the outlets, light etc. are on different phases differs widely.
Our grid uses the same voltages as Europe. Our houses even generally receive 240V from the line. Itās just that we went with 120V for most appliances and electronics for some reason.
Iād also argue a lot of Americans technically do have electric kettles, and they just donāt realize it because theyāre advertised as coffee makers. Itās not ideal, but you can definitely use a drip coffee machine to boil water, and itāll still be faster than a stove.
Unfortunately for every tea drinker in an American hotel, most coffee makers (at least the drip kind) will make any water boiled inside taste like coffee, unless theyāve been used exclusively for plain boiled water. Maybe a combo tea/coffee drinker wouldnāt mind, but Iāve always found it intolerable.
But itās a good point about the grid - we have plenty of appliances for coffee that are principally glorified water boilers, and thereās no evidence that our appliance voltage has hampered their popularity at all.
As a combo tea/coffee drink, it tastes horrible. Nobody wants tea flavored coffee or coffee flavored tea. Although you usually donāt get tea flavored coffee in those hotel drip makers, but only because the grounds they use are shit tier quality and taste too burnt to even get tea flavors.
it really doesnāt. european houses generally receive 400V from the line, split into 3 220V phases. you guys get two 120V phases that are fully phase-shifted, rather than 120Ā° offset, and you bridge two phases to get 240 for heavy appliances.
Itās mostly for commercial installations, but you can get 3-phase 480V here if you want it.
I donāt think this has much to do with the grid, though. Itās more that we started with 120V appliances, so thatās what we built our homes to support.
You get 3-phase in the US if you live in a large apartment complex. Especially if it has an elevator. Since this combines to get 208V, the math works out to making your 240V stove only 75% of what it should be.
For residential use, split phase is fine. We just run the two legs to get 240V on the specific things that need it. Thatās generally electric stoves, water heaters, AC unit, electric dryer, and more recently, EV chargers. 3-phase is great when youāre driving something that spins with a high draw, and of those, only the AC unit does that (electric dryers spend most of their electricity heating, not spinning).
Edison distributed Ā±110V DC against neutral, three wires, your AC system was designed to use those exact wires, then you expanded that compromise to the whole continent.
Europe in the beginning also had those small insular installations with odd systems but once it came to actually hooking up whole countries everyone opted for three-phase because itās the most sensible option. Whether or not the distribution network itself uses three conductors (just the phases) or four (plus neutral, or combined earth+neutral) differs quite wildly. Train electricity is still a clusterfuck.
Iāve actually timed my kettle. 15 ounces of water(I have larger mugs than ānormalā) takes 2 minutes and 34 seconds to be a full rolling boil. Iām really not that concerned.
Tea isnāt that popular here although Iād argue in recent years it has been gaining on what it once was. I think where other countries kettles are the norm, here ācoffee makersā are the norm.
The majority of the more āpopularā form of tea weād have here is probably considered an abomination onto nuggin elsewhere: sweet tea. (Iced tea with about 628648lbs of sugar in it.)
I think this is the largest reason right here. People are naturally going to reserve their limited counter space for the stuff they use daily. For Americans, thatās more likely to be some kind of coffee maker than an electric kettle.
Growing up where I did, I knew a lot of families that regularly made iced tea. But they usually made a gallon at a time, once or twice a week, and still drank coffee every day - so they had counter top coffee makers, and stovetop kettles that could be stored away the rest of the week.
In my country (and most of northern Europe I presume), induction stoves are becoming very common. I tossed my electric kettle 7 years ago when I got induction.
I own one because Iām a coffee snob and enjoy pourovers. Before I went down that whole road, no. And neither did anyone I knew well enough to dig through their kitchen
Wait, do Americans not own kettles?
Thatās like one of the first things I bought when I moved out.
their shitty electrical grid means kettles take like double the time to boil.
Thatās not true and also itās not the reason. We just donāt drink a lot of tea. Thereās not a huge reason to own an electric kettle unless youāre drinking a lot of tea. Itās still much faster than a stovetop kettle.
Great video on this from technology connections. tl;dr it takes more time, but not, like, that much more. We mostly just donāt have a huge tea-drinking culture here.
My family (American) did drink a lot of tea. Surprise surprise, we had a kettle. I did not die of old age from the cumulative weight of all that waiting.
ā¦you donāt brew your coffee hot?
Not sure what you mean. Americans do brew hot coffee, but they generally donāt use a kettle to brew it. Hand-brewing methods like pour over are a very recent trend here. In my experience growing up, the vast majority of households used an electric drip coffee machine, or a stovetop percolator before they had electricity. Even now, when pour over and the aeropress are starting to get popular, Iād wager that a vast majority of households are still using a machine - either a drip machine or one of those pod machines - rather than a brewing method that requires a kettle.
Edit: found some stats on American home coffee brewing. Among Americans who brew coffee at home, 48% tend to use a drip machine, and 29% use a pod machine, neither of which requires a kettle. If we assume the entire pour over (5%) and French press (5%) market owns a kettle, and that the entire āotherā category (6%) owns a kettle (which seems very generous), thatās still only 16% of home coffee drinkers using a kettle. (Another 7% use an espresso machine or percolator, and I think the last 1% was lost to rounding.)
Drip machines make worse coffee and are more of a hassle than just dumping hot water into the filter holder all at once so Iāll chalk it up to abysmal US coffee culture combined with consumerism, then.
Not yet. Just you wait.
chronic exposure to time dramatically increases your chances of getting terminally old.
So why does Japan at 100V have electric kettles everywhere? Itās a cultural reason not the electrical grid.
good point! i donāt know much about their grid, only that itās 50Hz in the west and 60Hz in the east.
Iāve never heard of anywhere in US using 50Hz and Iāve lived on the West Coast my whole life.
that may be because we were talking about japan!
I love that youāve come into a discussion about Japanās electrical grid and still assumed that the conversation is about America.
I mean, the conversation started about Americaās electric grid. It was ambiguous from context.
No it really wasnāt. āI donāt know much about their gridā means the next āitā in the comment is referring to ātheir gridā. No ambiguity to be had, friend.
Not that East and West, the East and West.
Pretty much every person I know in Canada has an electric kettle and every single office Iāve worked in has one, my kitchen has 15a outlets which is still 1800W. I have a simple gooseneck kettle that I usw mainly for coffee, itās only 1kW and holds around 750ml, itās not blisteringly fast but itās boiled before Iāve ground my coffee.
The whole ā120v is holding us back from having kettlesā is way overblown (technology connections has a video on electric kettles).
1800W are not out of the ordinary for water cookers in Europe but thatās definitely on the weak side. 3000 to 3200 is usually the maximum, probably because pulling the full 3600W would drastically increase the chances of tripping a fuse. My food processor is 600W and I might want to make a coffee while kneading dough.
Have to drop the US number by 20% for continuous loads like a kettle would be.
That said, US homes built in the last 40 years or so tend to have a lot of separate circuits in the kitchen. My house has one for the fridge, one for the disposal, one for the dishwasher, one for the lights thatās shared with lights in adjacent areas, stove has its own 240V outlet, and then one for all the other plugs. If I ran the microwave and a kettle and a mixer all at once, Iād probably still trip it, but thatās a lot of multitasking going on.
If kettles were continuous loads weād have to reduce from 16A to 10A (2200W) or 8A (1800W). Schuko are rated for as little as 1h of 16A but for a kettle thatās plenty, theyāre done in a minute or two.
German stoves are connected to at least 2x10A, newer installations (as in since the 70s or such) all provide 3x16A. Not actually three-phase theyāre still 220V appliances. Whether the outlets, light etc. are on different phases differs widely.
Our grid uses the same voltages as Europe. Our houses even generally receive 240V from the line. Itās just that we went with 120V for most appliances and electronics for some reason.
Iād also argue a lot of Americans technically do have electric kettles, and they just donāt realize it because theyāre advertised as coffee makers. Itās not ideal, but you can definitely use a drip coffee machine to boil water, and itāll still be faster than a stove.
Unfortunately for every tea drinker in an American hotel, most coffee makers (at least the drip kind) will make any water boiled inside taste like coffee, unless theyāve been used exclusively for plain boiled water. Maybe a combo tea/coffee drinker wouldnāt mind, but Iāve always found it intolerable.
But itās a good point about the grid - we have plenty of appliances for coffee that are principally glorified water boilers, and thereās no evidence that our appliance voltage has hampered their popularity at all.
As a combo tea/coffee drink, it tastes horrible. Nobody wants tea flavored coffee or coffee flavored tea. Although you usually donāt get tea flavored coffee in those hotel drip makers, but only because the grounds they use are shit tier quality and taste too burnt to even get tea flavors.
it really doesnāt. european houses generally receive 400V from the line, split into 3 220V phases. you guys get two 120V phases that are fully phase-shifted, rather than 120Ā° offset, and you bridge two phases to get 240 for heavy appliances.
Itās mostly for commercial installations, but you can get 3-phase 480V here if you want it.
I donāt think this has much to do with the grid, though. Itās more that we started with 120V appliances, so thatās what we built our homes to support.
You get 3-phase in the US if you live in a large apartment complex. Especially if it has an elevator. Since this combines to get 208V, the math works out to making your 240V stove only 75% of what it should be.
For residential use, split phase is fine. We just run the two legs to get 240V on the specific things that need it. Thatās generally electric stoves, water heaters, AC unit, electric dryer, and more recently, EV chargers. 3-phase is great when youāre driving something that spins with a high draw, and of those, only the AC unit does that (electric dryers spend most of their electricity heating, not spinning).
Edison distributed Ā±110V DC against neutral, three wires, your AC system was designed to use those exact wires, then you expanded that compromise to the whole continent.
Europe in the beginning also had those small insular installations with odd systems but once it came to actually hooking up whole countries everyone opted for three-phase because itās the most sensible option. Whether or not the distribution network itself uses three conductors (just the phases) or four (plus neutral, or combined earth+neutral) differs quite wildly. Train electricity is still a clusterfuck.
Iāve actually timed my kettle. 15 ounces of water(I have larger mugs than ānormalā) takes 2 minutes and 34 seconds to be a full rolling boil. Iām really not that concerned.
not true, thatās a myth
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Itās still just a few minutes. Donāt heat up more water than you are going to use.
Tea isnāt that popular here although Iād argue in recent years it has been gaining on what it once was. I think where other countries kettles are the norm, here ācoffee makersā are the norm.
The majority of the more āpopularā form of tea weād have here is probably considered an abomination onto nuggin elsewhere: sweet tea. (Iced tea with about 628648lbs of sugar in it.)
I think this is the largest reason right here. People are naturally going to reserve their limited counter space for the stuff they use daily. For Americans, thatās more likely to be some kind of coffee maker than an electric kettle.
Growing up where I did, I knew a lot of families that regularly made iced tea. But they usually made a gallon at a time, once or twice a week, and still drank coffee every day - so they had counter top coffee makers, and stovetop kettles that could be stored away the rest of the week.
I had a dedicated saucepan to make iced tea to ensure my tea only tasted like tea.
I guess Iām surprised, Iām in Canada so expected weād be very similar.
But you also have garbage disposals and Iāve never seen one here.
In my country (and most of northern Europe I presume), induction stoves are becoming very common. I tossed my electric kettle 7 years ago when I got induction.
Itās faster than a kettle in most of my pots.
I own one because Iām a coffee snob and enjoy pourovers. Before I went down that whole road, no. And neither did anyone I knew well enough to dig through their kitchen