Try to use this concept kit without simmering your skin, I dare you
It’s Friday, which means I’m cranky enough to pick apart an ill-conceived concept design. This week we take a look at Ziv Lichi’s Kettle and Mug, aka Hoffee, a rather pretty piece of kitchenware that puts a tea/coffee mug inside the scalding interior of an electric kettle.
It works like this. You put the fluted cup into an identically-shaped receptacle in the middle of the kettle. You then carefully fill the surrounding moat with water, and switch on. As the water boils, the cup heats.
Then, when the water is roiling towards vaporization, the kettle clicks off. What on earth do you do next? Do you reach in and try to pull out the now too-hot cup by its rim, your delicate fingers mere millimeters from the blistering sea below?
Or do you pour the hot water into another, presumably cold receptacle, which might defeat the one and only point I can see to this design: Making tea. Good tea has to be hit by still-boiling water (as the Brits and Aussies know well) to make a good cup. This can involve pre-heating your teapot. But not pre-heating your cup! All that will do is burn your lips and lengthen the time it takes for the now-brewed tea to be drinkable. And while the cup is hot, the pot is still cold.
Also, imagine pouring from this kettle with the cup inside. As you tip it past perpendicular, the cup will slide out. Good luck catching it with all that boiling water sloshing around.
I guess it could be that you’re not supposed to put the cup inside at all when in use, and this just makes a take-anywhere coffee kit. But then, I can already fit at least one cup inside my regular kettle. Utterly bewildering, and yet I still kind of want to try one out. Or at least watch somebody else do it.
Mug in a Kettle [Yanko]
Post a Comment