Name: Kettles.
Age: 132. First featured in a catalogue in 1893.
Appearance: Increasingly obsolete.
I already don’t like where this is going. Get with the programme. Apparently young people in Britain are not using kettles to make cups of tea.
They’re boiling their water in a saucepan? Worse.
You don’t mean … I do. It pains me to say that they are now microwaving it.
Hear that sound? It’s King Arthur weeping. Or maybe they’re doing it right. Maybe they’re sick of making tea in an old, limescale-filled, single-use appliance.
But that’s traditional! It doesn’t matter. A survey of just over 2,000 UK energy bill payers by Uswitch has found that 58% of under-30s have used a microwave to make a cuppa, and one in six say they do it every day.
Why? Is it quicker? No. A mug’s worth of water takes 48 seconds to boil in a kettle, and almost three minutes in a microwave.
So, does it produce a better quality drink? Also, no. Dr Tim Bond from the Tea Advisory Panel says that microwaves heat water unevenly, which leads to uneven tea extraction, which leads to a stewed flavour.
Then why microwave water at all? Well, the answer may be twofold. For one thing, student halls are increasingly prohibiting the use of kettles due to steam setting off alarms, so some young people at university are forced to nuke their water in a microwave …
What’s the other reason? The American influence.
The what? Americans typically don’t use electric kettles, so they are more likely to microwave their water. Perhaps people who grow up consuming US culture are starting to believe that it’s the norm.
Wow. First they elected Trump, and now this. It’s OK. It just means that owning an electric kettle has become a sign of the resistance. The UK may not be a perfect country but we do at least know how to boil water properly.
Yes! And our national rallying cry should be: “Tea before milk!” Actually, about that …
What now? A few years ago a scientist from Leeds University worked out that for many of us, tea actually tastes better if you put milk in before tea.
This feels like an affront to everything I hold dear. Don’t worry, you can add it to the list of things that Gen Z have berated for – their reluctance to use capital letters, their inability to change a lightbulb and, perhaps most worryingly, their dislike of democratic political systems.
This is all making microwaved tea feel quite trivial. Well, quite.
Do say: “I’ll put the kettle on …”
Don’t say: “… put it on eBay, I mean. Now, who’s for a cup of refreshing microwaved tea?”