How many cups of tea/coffee do you have a day?

[Mr Gus]

The majority of the public will I guess boil too much water, use some, the rest gets cold & stale possibly re-boiled (more energy) possibly chucked down the drain.
point of a full flask = full maintains heat efficiency & is quickly accesible for a top up / other uses, & if the temp drops as it cools from being say 1/2 empty 4-6 hrs later a re-boil takes seconds as it is already pretty high (just not perfect for that drink) compared to starting over with mains temperature water out of the tap.

The other consideration is, smaller amounts of water = closer to getting scale taste & scale matter in a brew, compared to a controlled pour of the big old hot flask, pouring that water in might take 10-15 seconds to get to a rolling boil compared to minutes from cold, yes its a reheat, but a miserly one if done right

[Oldgreybeard]

As an aside, I discovered that if you drink lots and lots of tea it may have a detrimental effect on your health and well being. When building this house (mostly on my own, working ten to twelve hour days) as soon as I had the water working and the kitchen installed (with the boiling water tap) I found myself drinking maybe 8 to 12 mugs of tea per day, partly because it was just so quick and easy to make a quick cuppa when you always have boiling water on tap.

First indications of something going awry were difficulty sleeping. Next, were serious issues with mood swings at weekends (I tried to stick to a 5 day working week on the house, just to stay sane). It came to a head when my wife got so worried about what was happening that she booked a holiday, as a break from building the house. The first few days of that holiday were like hell on earth, I couldn't sleep, was constantly on edge and very twitchy, couldn't even sit and watch TV without getting up every few minutes.

After a few days, normality started to return, my sleep pattern returned to being fairly normal. The main difference between being on holiday and the time before was my tea intake. I started to moderate the number of mugs of tea I was drinking each day and the symptoms pretty much went away. Not positive proof that tea was the culprit, but fairly compelling circumstantial evidence that tea was to blame. More accurately, I suspect the problem was the caffeine in the tea.

[Mr Gus]

I cut down to 3 per morning, maybe a 4th later but generally switching to cold drinos & training my body not to "crave"
When just landed in canada id take teabags as a comfort blanket (but milk was the problem) & old breakfast habits die hard, used to take a fortnight of twitchiness to get settled into the bad coffee.

Nowadays, over here I can alternate between coffee or tea for weeks on end no problem, its just training, I do however get dehydrated without my hot liquid & that gives me headaches.

i have always been addicted to pepsi max, its "crack" ..but lately have been weaning myself off it having found a cheap yet good alternative "aldi zx?? cola" which has got me down to around 750 ml per day to date, slowing intake as weather cools helps, hopefully back to plain water again soon.

So does anyone do a reflective thermal layer beneath a kettle element or what?
bring on the heat mouldable kettle cozy.

[openspaceman]

I have been wondering about buying a 2.2kW kettle to replace my 3kw current one - as my single battery Pv system can only output 2.5kW from the battery, so will always use energy from the grid unless there is a substantial amount of sun in addition to battery usage.

Much the same thinking as mine, so I bought a Cordless Nordic one, 2kW and glass 1.7litre for 30 quid in March, it works well. The minimum level is a shade under two cups.

Are there any 3kW ones? I thought 2.4kW was a limit because of the modern 3 pin plug.

[Gareth J]

While every little helps, and behavioural change is important, my opinion is this sort of thing is a distraction but also potentially even worse than doing nothing.

It's a distraction as ~ 1.5kWh a month is peanuts. It's about 0.5% of the UK's average per capita energy use (~4500kWh/yr). And as mentioned, you can roughly half that figure again when the "wasted" heat is doing useful house warming.

It could potentially be even worse than doing nothing if the embodied energy and energy cost of disposal of an old kettle would never be recouped. Worth considering if replacing a dead kettle, so long as a fancy temperature controlled one is not significantly less reliable and you can make good use of it though.

[Joeboy]

Around 7 cups of tea per day and a mid afternoon coffee when at home. When out in Turkey that falls to 3 & 1, the rest is beer.

I particularly enjoy filling a cup with cold water, pouring it into a pan and whacking on the induction hob to its full 2.8kW, literally a handful of silent seconds and it's done. Also still enjoying the instant off too.

Gives me my star wars fix in the A.M

[Bugtownboy]

Three first thing and one cup for DW - kettle boiled on the gas hob, pot of tea (loose leaf) made that does the four mugs. Saturday and Sunday we make two pots, so 6 + 2 first thing.

Two ‘French Press espresso’ cups of coffee mid morning, then a mixed herbal ‘tonic’ tea mid afternoon.

Avoid caffeine after lunchtime.

[dangermouse]

While every little helps, and behavioural change is important, my opinion is this sort of thing is a distraction but also potentially even worse than doing nothing.

It's a distraction as ~ 1.5kWh a month is peanuts. It's about 0.5% of the UK's average per capita energy use (~4500kWh/yr). And as mentioned, you can roughly half that figure again when the "wasted" heat is doing useful house warming.

It could potentially be even worse than doing nothing if the embodied energy and energy cost of disposal of an old kettle would never be recouped. Worth considering if replacing a dead kettle, so long as a fancy temperature controlled one is not significantly less reliable and you can make good use of it though.

All very good points, and my original post was intended to be a little tongue in cheek since the energy saving is so small.

I suspect that ensuring you only heat as much water as you need is a much larger potential saving for most people, although not some of the energy conscious people on this board!

And if you heat water in a pan, putting a lid on it can save a fair amount of energy, I seem to remember.

[Stig]

And if you heat water in a pan, putting a lid on it can save a fair amount of energy, I seem to remember.

Unless you're cooking pasta then it will foam up, boil over and maybe even put the gas out!
(every time )

[AE-NMidlands]

And if you heat water in a pan, putting a lid on it can save a fair amount of energy, I seem to remember.

Unless you're cooking pasta then it will foam up, boil over and maybe even put the gas out!
(every time )

I deal with that by having the lid displaced and the gas turned down to balance the amount of heat lost to keep it boiling just right (and running the simple cooker hood/extract fan.)

All very good points, and my original post was intended to be a little tongue in cheek since the energy saving is so small.
I suspect that ensuring you only heat as much water as you need is a much larger potential saving for most people, although not some of the energy conscious people on this board!

One nice thing about our "Russell-Hobbs" kettle is that it has 1- 2- and 3-cup indicators inside where they are below the side window. I have just worked out that they are 3 fl oz or 160 ml each... but we never use them as (back to the topic) we have 3 mugs of stong cafetiere coffee between us at breakfast and 2 after lunch. These need the water at about what the stupid side level indicator window says are 4 and 6 cups - the bottom one being 2! It also then shows a max of 1.7 litres a bit below where 8 cups would be.
I do use the kettle for pre-heating water for pasta and green beans as I believe that the element in the water is probably better than gas under a pan - although if the price differential goes up much more I might have to reconsider that. When we have our pv and batteries the default will be electric cooking though.

Apart from meal-time coffee we don't drink at all during the day apart from diluted orange juice at lunchtime, then diluted home-made wine when cooking and eating dinner ("high tea.")
A