After being perplexed at how long it took my vac pot water to "boil" after I had already brought the water to a full boil in my tea-kettle, I temped the water out of the whistling kettle, and was shocked to see it only registering in at 186F! This was with no wait period. I tested another kettle - same results. Altitude where I live is only a little over 400 ft. So the question is, do tea kettles boil water? Or does the seal simply raise the steam pressure inside the kettle prematurely, creating the whistle well before boiling point?

I do a lot of manual brewing and would love to know if anyone else can confirm this situation and offer a different, convenient way to actually boil water.

You've heard the expression, bring the water to a full boil?

In that case, the lid/whistling devices are worthless? Unless one wants to be driven mad waiting for full boil.

Never been a Tea Kettle kinda guy. What I do, when Im making vacpot is..

1)Add the amount of water I want in the bottom globe. Put it on the stove, turn on stove.
2)Grind Coffee. I use a PeDe so it takes a minute.
3)add filter to top globe. Add coffee. Put on stand.
4)wait for some small bubbles to appear in the bottom globe which is on the stove.
5)assemble vacpot.
6)Siphon starts in about 10-15 seconds.

If you dont want to do this, you can either boil water in the Micro, or in a pot on the stove. OR, if you dont have a big vacpot, you can use your steam wand.

195F is supposed to be the magic number for tea, which is fairly close the the number for coffee, so the whistle going off somewhat early is a good thing. It just sounds like your whistle is a little premature.

What I know of cooking is that all water will bubble and steam before it reaches the boiling point, due to the bottom layer of the pot, but not the rest of the pot, getting to boil. Full boil is signaled by a "rolling boil," i.e. not just bubbles and steam, but visible currents circulating in the water. Organized, large scale motion takes lots of free energy, and that comes from the generation of serious amounts of steam.

This is not something you can see without severe eye damage in a teapot. Can you say Zojirushi?

I can say Zojirushi, but can I justify 100 smackers for a water boiler ?....

noah wrote:...if anyone else can confirm this situation and offer a different, convenient way to actually boil water.

I use a Bodum Mini Ibis Electric Water Kettle ("hotpot"). It has a built-in thermostat that cuts off power seconds after the water reaches a full boil. I let it cool down 30 seconds and pour.

I have one of these things (somewhere); it might take a day or two to locate it in my basement. $37 is about twice what the thing is worth, in my opinion only. I think you could find a similar Chinese-made product (I'm sure the Bodum is Chinese-made as well) for half that at your local Walmart or Dollar store.

ken

noah wrote:I can say Zojirushi, but can I justify 100 smackers for a water boiler ?....

I wasn't sure when I bought it, but now I can't live without it. Also, these things have ben around so long, that the design is by now virtually perfect; and it's a pleasure using anything so well suited to its purpose.

I just turned on my Proctor Silex kettle (model K3060) and put a pot of water on the stove, when they reached a boil, I dropped in my two thermometers (my deep fryer and my milk thermometers). In both instances, the deep fryer thermometer measured 195 and my milk thermometer read 204. My altitude is around 4,000 ft so a temperature of 205-210 is about right; I guess my deep fryer thermometer is a bit off....

I don't have a whistling kettle, so I don't know if the are effective or not.