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Comment by fuckstick | Hacker News Reader

What do they use the kettles for? For most non tea drinking households in the US there is no essential use for a kettle.

They do sell them here, people buy them, they are usually tea drinkers.

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German in Canada here. I used mine to cook water for pasta as it's usually faster and more efficient than my electric cooktop. Bought one in Canada and it's close to useless for that purpose. My German kettle would bring 1.7L of tap water to a rolling boil in about 4 minutes. My Canadian one needs about 10 minutes to achieve the same.

To perhaps state the obvious, I use mine mainly for coffee. And the occasional tea cup.

Honestly it seems more likely for an American household to have a Keurig machine (or hell, even multiple Keurigs) than to have any kind of kettle.

You're on target here. I have become the dumping ground for misbehaving keurigs from family and have managed to make most of them work or frankenstein parts between them. I hate the machines and wish this never happened. I was happy with a french press. Curse my urge to not waste things.

Last sentence is ironic because keurigs waste so much plastic if you use them daily.

It feels like much plastic since you touch each one, but it's a very tiny amount if you weigh your monthly usage.

> I was happy with a french press. Curse my urge to not waste things.

I don't understand this sentence, I would much rather waste some ground coffee beans and water than plastic.

With a French Press, you don't have to buy and throw away a constant stream of paper filters.

A Keurig machine is just an electric kettle with an electric pump inside of it.

Can it be used like a kettle - ie can it rapidly heat up a quart of water without a coffee residue taste? No, it cannot.

Just because they both heat water doesn’t make them similar.

Pretty much. I used my keurig this way for a few years until i realized I'm really not using pods and am only using it for hot water to make tea (via normal steeping). If you brew coffee and then use it for something right after I don't recall there being much coffee taste, but you could probably run a small cup setting to flush things in the pod area a bit if needed.

I've since switched to a Zojirushi water boiler which I adore, especially after learning my keurig wasn't getting hot enough to really brew the tea well.

I used to use my Senseo to make ramen so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I strongly disagree. With a kettle, the whole volume of water is being heated at once and is a uniform temperature. A Keurig or drip coffee maker is only heating a small volume of water at a time. By the time you process a whole liter of water the first bit will have already cooled off a lot. It's a very different process and potentially a very different outcome.

If you're making a single cup (~250mL) why do you need to heat 1000mL of water?

Ok exactly - in addition to keurigs /nespressos etc mentioned (which I will refuse to buy) - for years the predominant coffee making apparatus in the US has been the automatic drip coffee maker.

French press, pour over, chemx are all niche.

Tea.

French press coffee.

Instant coffee, hot cider, hot chocolate, etc.

Heating water for instant soups, etc.

> there is no essential use for a kettle

electric kettle

french press for coffee

tea kettle for tea

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