6
votes
Electric kettles turn off automatically when the water starts to boil. So what happens when you boil alcohol that has a lower boiling point?
Link information
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- Title
- Will a Kettle Full Of Alcohol Stay On Forever?
- Authors
- Steve Mould
- Duration
- 12:30
- Published
- Jan 28 2022
I bet the kettle I use at home would keep boiling if you put alcohol in there or have a lower atmospheric pressure. I have a kettle that you can set the temperature to heat at, for brewing teas and coffees (e.g 75F for something delicate like a green tea, or 90F for “espresso like” aero press recipes), and clearly for that purpose it needs an electric temperature sensor. I would be very surprised if they bothered to add an extra sensor mechanism for the “just boil button”.
It is interesting that the average kettle uses vapor temperature. I wonder if it’s cheaper to do so because the precision of the bimetallic element can be much lower, or maybe it’s because they tend to be made in China which does have its fair share of high altitude areas.
Without watching the video, wouldn't it have the same behavior as an electric kettle used with water at a high enough elevation to have a noticeable drop in boiling point? I live in Denver, where water boils at around 203-204F. My electric kettle will just sit at 204 for 30 seconds before shutting off automatically, since it will never hit 212 here.
It probably depends on the kettle, but there are no timers in any of the ones he experiments with. There are some other pretty simple but clever mechanisms inside them that he discovers, and figures out how they work though. And he also does talk about atmospheric pressure affecting boiling point, and how that relates to said mechanisms briefly as well. You should really just watch the video though, IMO it's really quite interesting.
After watching it, it looks like they just used a high heat version of the bimetallic strips analog home thermostats use, nothing particularly unique about that. It's relieving that they made sure to set the point at which the strip begins deforming at lower than 100C though.
It does look like mine (which is one of those models with multiple temperature set points for various teas) does just use a timer as a fallback mechanism, since there's no bimetallic strip or vapor connection to the base, just a temperature sensor poking into the water chamber. It really shows when attempting to use the 3 minute sterilizing boil setting, as it will just shut off after 30 seconds at 204 same as a standard boil.
I read that title and thought "Hah, that'd make for a great Steve Mould video".
Watch enough Youtube and you start to become The Algorithm yourself.