My “um” is confusion, not condescension.
Please be careful not to create “exploding water.”
If you haven’t heard about this from Alton Brown or the Mythbusters: water heated in a very smooth vessel in the microwave can be heated past the boiling point without actually boiling. As soon as it’s disturbed, though, it boils all at once, and “explodes” out of its container. I suspect that the foaming Struan observed in his microwaved mug is a small-scale manifestation of this, and if the water was indeed superheated, it could certainly affect the way the tea brews.
I don’t know who the hell thought that, but my microwave experiment is underway. I (pretty much, I hope) guarantee that the fans will not allow the water to reach true boiling point in the way that a kettle does.
I’ll agree that water boiled in a kettle somehow tastes different from that boiled in a microwave. I like tea much better with nuked water. I think that somehow the tannin doesn’t extract as easily. I’m guessing it’s something to do with how much oxygen is released.
Ack! Be careful! It only takes a minute or two even in an old microwave to boil the water. You can superheat the water - it won’t look like it’s boiling at all but if you put something in it, it will go flying out of the container. In fact, you know your water started to superheat when the tea bag fizzes.
And yes, of course it reaches the boiling point - and beyond. If you’ve never had anything boil over in the microwave, consider yourself lucky.
Really, please be careful.
OK, so on preview, I’m redundant.
Isn’t that a phenomenon that involves pure water, ultra-clean glassware and a sudden shock? Anyway, my experiment has been going for a while, the water is hot, and the fans are removing steam. I don’t think this cuboid with ventilation is going to be able to do what a kettle can!
Weird. My microwave will get water into a vigorous boil.
No!
Why? There’s no question that you can’t boil water in a microwave. What makes you think it won’t boil? That you don’t see the steam doesn’t mean there’s no boiling going on.
hmmm, there is plenty of steam, and that’s been twenty minutes or so , I’ll see if a good cuppa can be made.
Weird… 2 minutes on high in my microwave will bring a whole soup bowl of water to a vigorous, splashing boil.
Have a look at this http://www.physics.hku.hk/~phys0607/lectures/chap01.html
- do a find on Superheat to get a lot of info about what happens to water in a microwave.
How odd. It’s still fizzy, and not so hot that I couldn’t dip my pinky in it (briefly). |It’s not a bad cup of tea though.
Yeah I can heat a covered bowl of soup in two minutes or whatever.
I was boiling an open vessel though. Kitchen is sauna-like due to evaporation but the water wasn’t ridiculously hot after all that time.
I’m not talking about a covered bowl. I’m talking about a bowl full of water, sitting in the microwave, turned on for 2 minutes. (Water, not soup–“soup bowl” is just the size of the bowl)
I wonder if you just have really wussy microwaves over there?
Well, anything called “chai” is tea- That’s what it means. Indians take their tea with cardamom (and various other things that my mother won’t identify and I can’t, at least in my family), but it doesn’t mean that it’s a different drink.
As far as the kettle/microwave thing, you’re all missing the point. The microwave doesn’t work right before you never actually get to pour the tea over the bag (or leaves, if that’s your thing). You dunk it. However, the pour is essential to the making of a nice cuppa. If you want to microwave water, then pour it onto a bag in a separate mug, be my guest. Works just as well.
Another big problem with making tea here, though, is that American shops don’t carry electric kettles. Seriously. And the ones that do- and I swear I’m not making this up- only have the ones that whistle. They don’t have automatic shutoff- you have to listen for the whistle, and then go and unplug them. In the 13 years I’ve lived here, I’ve seen exactly one auto-shutoff kettle for sale, and it was a stainless steel Phillips model designed by Phillippe Starck or someone like that and it was $89. Hell, I’d be happy with an on/off switch, but they won’t even give you one of those.
The tea itself- when I lived in Britain, I drank Twinings’ Earl Grey (at least I think it was Twinings… it came in a sort of lavender-purpley box). Here, I drink the same thing, but it’s a) twice as expensive, which is especially irritating since everything else here is so much cheaper, and b) doesn’t taste as good. Partly, it’s the water- Florida water tastes just like you’d expect swamp water to taste. I’m convinced it’s also the bags, though.
I’m also partial to PG Tips, if only for the chimpanzee ad campaign.
Ewww… you made tea with unfiltered water? IN FLORIDA?! :eek:
Actually, I have an electric, auto-shutoff kettle, with an on/off switch, that I bought at Wal-Mart for about $15. It doesn’t whistle, either, or I would have disabled it! They carry them as a regular item, because I’ve bought four of them in the last nine years (two for home, two for work). That’s because the water here is so hard, it forms a limestone crust over the element after a few years, and the inside goes a nasty shade of gray that won’t wash off.
See that’s how I thought microwave ovens worked, and yet mine (either of them 850 or 650 W) will not get water as hot as a kettle will. I wish I could frame a question or two for GQ. I’m sure the fans on the ovens are crucial.
Oh well anyway, you need a kettle to make decent cuppa, fact! 
I think Struan needs a new microwave.
They do sell electric kettles in the U.S.!!
This is the one I have and it works great - auto shut-off and everything (and, wow, those reviews suck, I’ve never had a problem). They sell it on Amazon, but I got mine at Bed, Bath & Beyond.
I was wondering that, but our domestic supply is very powerful. Oh, well. Perhaps my two microwaves are rubbish, which is very possible.