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“This kettle has changed my life,” my husband declared a week into using his new Fellow Stagg EKG Electric Kettle. This sleek, all-black electric kettle comes with to-the-degree temperature control, a gooseneck spout, rapid heating and the ability to keep its temperature for an hour – and it seems to be the gadget du jour among the coffee crowd over the last few years. Four months later, his enthusiasm for this kitchen item hasn’t waned even one bit.
Available at around £140 a pop, the Stagg kettle isn’t the most affordable on the market but it is certainly not alone. There are similarly fancy and popular goose-necked electric kettles out there promising “precise pours”, “optimal extractions” and a way to “ditch the achy arm and the wobbly pour” like Brewista’s Artisan Gooseneck Variable Kettle (£139) and Dualit’s Pour Over Kettle (£99). But are they worth it?
There's certainly a lot going for these kettles if you care about brewing a precisely made, scientifically optimised cup of coffee or tea at home. You could easily get a regular stove-top gooseneck kettle if its a precise pour you're after, but the temperature control and the temperature hold functionality is where these kettles excel – plus they're more energy efficient.
Wanting a green tea? The experts at the Tea & Herbal Infusions Association say lower temperatures around 70–80°C are ideal to prevent bitterness while a builder's brew should ideally use water boiled to 90-100°C for full flavour extraction. The coffee experts at the Honest Coffee Guide say the ideal French press should be brewed at 90°C, while a V60 pour-over is best at precisely 91°C.
Having a kettle with temperature control can also be helpful when baking (yeast should be activated at about 40°C), making homemade syrups or heating up baby formula to the recommended ~70°C temp without waiting for it to cool.
Taking things a step further is the proliferation of instant hot water taps like Quooker – a firm fixture on the ‘wishlist’ of anyone renovating a kitchen who's a gadget fiend. These instant boiling water taps are fitted with a boiler tank underneath the kitchen sink and connected to your electricity, which means you can get instantly boiling, warm, room-temperature, cold or even sparkling water at the touch of a button. The Quooker tap is also loved for its fairly discreet look; it comes in various finishes, from stainless steel to gold and brass. It also helps with decluttering precious counter space – no need for space-hogging, limescale-filled kettles or sparkling water makers with these regular-looking taps over the sink.
Even a few years ago it was one of the most popular gadgets among homeowners. ‘The top gadget that most of our clients require is a Quooker tap,’ Chris Pask, Director at architecture and interior design practice Charlton Brown explained.’ In fact the Quooker tap is so commonplace in any new kitchen design these days that Simon Hosein, Senior Designer at Smallbone says, “it's rare to sell a kitchen without one."
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Instant hot water taps are also more energy-efficient than kettles thanks to the insulated tanks minimising heat loss and the fact you only dispense as much water as you need rather than filling up a kettle with more water than you use.
While there are a few other brands out there, like Grohe and InSinkErator, Quooker is one of the few which dispenses water at 100 degrees while the others can sometimes feel a little lacking in heat which makes for a particularly sad tea.
At about £1,250 for the tap plus an installation fee which you won't want to skip, it's certainly a little eye-watering. And may not be worth the investment if you aren't devoted to either hot drinks or clear counters. Columnist Fiona McKenzie Johnston believes that they should not be bought for the sole purpose of elevating the look of your kitchen in her piece on how to make a high street kitchen look more expensive. “A Quooker tap, incidentally, does not make your kitchen look more expensive. It makes your kitchen look like it was arranged by someone who loves gadgets. If that’s you, go for it.”
Though they're certainly not essential, these modern kitchen gadgets are a joy for enthusiasts.
