Thursday, January 26, 2006

TMI

We’ve got one of those whistling teakettles.  It’s nothing fancy but it suffices to heat our water to 212 (100 celcius, or 3.2 hectares) reasonably efficiently.  I claim only “reasonable” efficiency, however, because the system has a gaping hole that is only sometimes adequately plugged.  To wit:

The kettle has a spout, naturally, which, when opened, allows water to be poured forth, and, when closed, forces built-up steam to escape through a sonorous pipe. The kettle also has, at the apex of its upthrust hemispherical design, a nice round hole fitted with a tight-fitting lid.  Remove the lid; fill the kettle.  Replace the lid and cover the spout with the whistling cap, and you’ve got a nice closed pressurization system.  The water, expanding as it boils and turns to vapor, builds up inside the envelope of air enclosed within the kettle, and forces piping-hot air ever more vigorously out the pipe at the spout.  This is your official notice that the water is hot enough to brew your tea, and sets the entire steeping process into motion.  It’s like the starter’s pistol for me on some bleary mornings, and there have been plenty of those lately - I hear the whistle and spring (or, rather, lurch) into action. 

Here’s the tricky bit, though: you’ve got to get the lid on properly for this to work.  Any significant breach of the air-seals at the top of the teakettle will divert so much of the escaping steam, that the interior pressure will only very slowly, if ever, reach the point where the whistle goes off.  It’s easy to tell if I’ve left the spout cap open; it’s a metal plate that juts from the lip of the spout, defying gravity with its jaunty upthrust.  But sometimes I don’t get the lid on properly.  It’s, well, askew.  And it just doesn’t work so well that way.  And I can be standing next to it, rubbing my eyes and denying reality, waiting for that whistle to bring me out of my reverie and galvanize me into action, and the water in the kettle is clearly boiling as hard as it can, rocking the broadbottomed pot on the stove, making the lid (askew) shudder and jiggle with small silvery clinks, and steam rises from the small hole in the spout cap but without enough pressure behind it to sound the whistle, and I am insensate to it all.

Eventually, the fog in the room forming warmly around my head from the escaping steam arouses my suspicions and I realize that I’ve already boiled the water so excessively that it’s not worth using for brewing tea.  Eurgh.  Flat, deoxygenated tea.  What a pathetic gesture with which to start one’s morning.  No, at this point I bestir myself of my own accord and refill the kettle, restart the process from scratch.  I find that tea made as a result of this whole process playing itself out, tastes no better than ordinary one-kettle tea.  It’s just a goddamn waste of time.

MORAL: Close cover before striking.  Anything.