[simonsquiff]

Boiling water tap. Amazing to make tea instantly without boiling the kettle, it’s also brilliant for cooking (boiling pasta or veg) and filling up hot water bottles. Amazing to have boiling water on tap (ha) cutting lots of time and no noisy kettle. Even free up worktop space by removing the kettle!

[jacknews]

Interesting, does it just heat instantly on demand, or does it keep a small reservoir? How is the energy efficiency compared to a kettle?

[simonsquiff]

It has a tank - you can get different sizes, mine is 4 litres (though usable is 3 I think).

Energy efficiency is about the same as a kettle - the tank is super insulated, and you only use what you need rather than boiling more in a kettle (and that then cooling down), that balances out the small tank losses. If you have solar it’s more friendly for that as it’s lower peak wattage so more likely to stay within your solar generation.

[netsharc]

That comment got me curious so I went searching, looks like one supplier is called QETTLE and they have many videos on YouTube. And a FAQ that mentions energy use: https://www.qettle.com/support/faqs , although the prices are probably from before the 2022 UK Government Omnishambles.

Here's another brand's innards of the reservoir: https://youtu.be/Q7TV73Y5kmo?t=614 . If I had to guess they keep it under high pressure so the water can be hotter than 100 deg C but still remain liquid.

[jacknews]

I guess it uses steam pressure to push the water out of the tap anyway.

I see several examples where the tap seems to be integrated into the sink or actually just another setting on the regular tap. That seems dangerous to me.

[thiht]

You should not use boiling water for tea as it will burn the leaves. It’s good for herbal tea and infusions but not for tea. As a rule of thumb, you should never go over 80°C for green tea (preferably 75°C), or 90°C for black tea.

If the instructions on your tea say 100°C, it’s either not tea, or very bad quality « leaves » (more like scraps)

[simonsquiff]

Black tea is what most of us kettle owning Brits drink, and apparently 100c is what you want. In fact it's a selling point of some boiling water taps that do true 100c rather than 98c of competitors

https://www.billi-uk.com/perfect-temperature-hot-cold-drinks...

[TeMPOraL]

I don't know what you should or should not do, but I can tell you this: I drink black tea a lot, and I can easily tell whether one was made with water taken straight from the electric kettle after it automatically disengages, vs. one minute later, vs. from "hot" water from a coffee machine or a watercooler. The first one - straight after it finished boiling - is what tastes best to me.