Dorm Tea Brewing

let’s be honest, microwaving hot water is never precise, does anyone have any ways they make tea in the dorm better? I’m brand new to steepster, I work at Teavana, and I love cooling down with tea. Any low cost electric kettles to reccomend? People are always coming to my room for teas, and since I get a lot of teas for a fairly low cost, I don’t mind dishing it out, but it takes forever.

Or, discuss fave easy and hard-to-screw up teas :)

15 Replies

When I lived in the dorms I had a $20 Hamilton Beach electric kettle that I picked up from Walmart the day I moved in. It made boiling water a lot quicker, although you had to wait for the water to cool down for anything that required a lower temperature because all it did was boil water. It was certainly more efficient than the microwave and you can’t beat the price.

sansnipple said

the hamilton-beach programable temp model is only $40 (at walmart or amazon) so it’s probably worth springing for a variable temp one.

I agree, I wish they had one with a variable temp when I was in school, it would have made life much easier.

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Uniquity said

I’d go for the kettle. If you’re feeling economical, find one of the ones that doubles as a hot pot for heating soups and stuff. Just wash thoroughly between uses. :)

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Downtown Chicago has no walmart, I’m going to go on an adventure!

Dustin said

Order on Amazon and have one delivered!

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Lala said

Make sure to find out what the regulations are in your dorm, when I lived in dorms we were not allowed to have any kettles or anything like that in our rooms. We had a communal kitchenette that had a kettle.

My dorm had the same policy, but no one really cared about kettles. They were more concerned about hot plates that people would leave on, causing a fire hazard.

Uniquity said

We weren’t allowed microwaves or toasters but no-one was ever reported for a kettle. We did all get evacuated at 3 am once though because someone boiled pasta in the kitchenette and forgot it and went to bed. Not fun!

They actually provided us with a microwave and a good size mini fridge and a lot of us had toaster ovens as well. We once had an early morning evacuation when someone threw a st. pats party and their fog machine set off the alarms. Oh the memories…

Lala said

I got “questioned” because I had a hot pot in my room. Which is like a kettle but you can also heat up soup, etc., in it. I just said I brought it to the kitchenette to use it. Ha ha. I think we all probably bent the rules a bit while living in rez. We had “extreme weather detectors” in our rooms which detected not only hot (and smoke) but coldness. So freq in the winter they went off because someone would open their window to try to cool off.

Ours was illegal but one with an auto shut off would have been fine. One of my friends once set his dorm bed on fire because his reading light fell on the bedding while on. He lived across the hall from me. That was fun.

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Thumbs up for the hamilton beach kettle. can’t go wrong for $20.

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I’m an RA, so I know that Kettles are fine in my building.

I’d go variable temp if you can, opens up all sorts of tea possibilities that are otherwise difficult. I’ve found that the herby herbals are hard to screw up. Anything with hibiscus is easy to oversteep.

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