Hard & soft water in a kettle makes it 'pop'

I'm not sure it's the combination** that makes it 'pop'. I live in a hard water area and my kettle 'pops'.

As I've always lived in hard water areas, I can't recall ever being alarmed by it. (Visits to west Cumbria on holiday -- none more recent that 42 years ago -- never involved me putting on a kettle.)


** - An electric kettle with no water in it at all doesn't so much "pop" as make a loud bang. (Don't try this at home... or anywhere else!)
 
Interesting, because when we were with the in-laws in deepest Cumbria last weekend, I commented about the MiL's kettle going pop whilst boiling!

They have hard, mardy water up there; compared to the soft, wussy water we have here in Birmingham - and our kettle has never gone pop, other than when a fuse has blown!
 
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The story isn't clear about whether the original water was from Ennerdale (soft) or Egremont (hard), so the good people of Whitehaven may have been boiling soft water until the change.


(Whitehaven folk being soft southerners. That's a shock even to me....)
 
I would say there are a couple of points here. One is there will inevitably be an element of the symptoms being psychosomatic. I'm not simply writing everyone's concerns off as that, and it would be severely glib to do so, but there will be an inevitable element of it. People know that something fundamental has changed - their water - and inevitably there will be a tendency to blame every little ill on that known change. Taste is sadly something that you will probably have to live with. I have pretty soft water where I live and when I stay in a hard water area (which I often do) then I really notice the water taste; I'm more used to soft water now so I find I don't like the taste of hard water. However the more significant one, in my opinion, is simply the change; some people (and I am one) react to a change in water, which shouldn't be surprising since you are feeding a different mix of minerals into your body with the water. I spend significant time in different places throughout the year: seven months at home in the Highlands with soft water, two months in Redhill with very hard water and three months in Chamonix in the Alps with medium hard water. Each time I move to one of these locations I will have a mildly upset stomach for 2-3 weeks. This both I and my doctor largely put down to the change in water. It passes and you get used to it.

Chemically I simply can't credit the mix of hard and soft as being of significance; mix the two together and all you are doing is diluting the minerals in the hard water a bit more and yes hard water does tend to go pop in your kettle; ask anyone living in the south downs.

When I first moved into my village up in the Highlands the water supply from the village came from a small dam up in the heather covered hills. Our water came out of the tap the colour of weak black tea due to all the peat in it, sometime worse sometimes better. It actually tasted really nice having a slightly sweet flavour to it, however it did tend to leave tide marks when washing your whites. Many of the residents kept complaining to the council and eventually they switched our supply to a new bore hole. We don't have any limestone or chalk around here so this was still pretty soft water but much less so than before, which had the benefit of finally making it possible to rinse all the soap out of our hair. But now the older folk in the village complain their soup doesn't taste as nice as it used to...

Just some possible thoughts.
 
On a tour of the Theakston's brewery it appeared that a lot of Theakstons is brewed elsewhere but to get the same taste the local water had been analysed and the appropriate minerals are added to the water used at the new brewery to recreate the original taste of the beer.
 
I still remember the little moment I had with my mate's ex, when - as I usually do - I filled the kettle from the cold tap.

Being Scottish, it was normal, but they (Norfolk) had this dirty great filter jug to clean up the water before it went in the kettle !

Live and learn.
 
The Ace said:
I still remember the little moment I had with my mate's ex, when - as I usually do - I filled the kettle from the cold tap.

Being Scottish, it was normal, but they (Norfolk) had this dirty great filter jug to clean up the water before it went in the kettle !

Live and learn.
Click to expand...
When I first moved up here my van kept overheating, I suggested that the radiator might be scaled up but the guys in the garage were like:

Mechanic: "no way, it's far to young for that"
Me: "You don't know what it's like living on the edge of Salisbury plain"
Mechanic: "Well if you're absolutely sure then we'll take it out and get it flushed"
Me: "Go for it"

They did but it came back from the flushers(?) with the message, "it's way too scaled up to be flushed. You need a new radiator, mate!"
 
Ursa major said:
I'm not sure it's the combination** that makes it 'pop'. I live in a hard water area and my kettle 'pops'.
Click to expand...
I concur. My London kettles are extremely loud and often quite violently noisy, but I actually didn't realise it was a result of the harder water until I read this now. I realise now that the kettles of my youth and student days were never so noisy. The "mixing" together of the Cumbrian water will have nothing to do with it (it is just that the water is harder now than it used to be previously and noticeably so.) Since the construction of the London Water Ring Main in 1993, London water has also been mixed together and isn't quite as hard as it once used to be. Limescale in my London kettles is still very bad though. It isn't worth buying an expensive kettle here. Even with regular descaling it needs replacing after a few years. One advantage is that they don't rust. I remember old kettles of my youth being very rusty. I prefer bits of scale to bits of rust in my tea. Tea tastes better with hard water (personally speaking.) However, you do need a lot more soap and shampoo to get a lather in hard water, maybe up to twice as much. It also scales up washing machines and dishwashers (and the ice machines we were talking about in another thread.)

Vladd67 said:
On a tour of the Theakston's brewery it appeared that a lot of Theakstons is brewed elsewhere but to get the same taste the local water had been analysed and the appropriate minerals are added to the water used at the new brewery to recreate the original taste of the beer.
Click to expand...
They actually brew most beer with water made to the Burton Water standard. Water from Burton on Trent is supposed to have the best properties for brewing and became the standard for brewing. Burton once had an unparalleled concentration of breweries. As you say, they still add minerals to water to recreate the taste of the beers.
 
Is there any chance that the tea tastes nicer with hard water because the boiling point of the water has been elevated?

I recall one of our teachers at school (this was not part of a formal lesson) telling us that one could not, for example, get a decent cup of tea while up in the Andes because water boiled at a lower temperature at high altitudes and proper tea needed boiling water at close to 100°C.

Perhaps it tastes even better when the water is above 100°C.
 
That last is true, Ursa, though I don't know about the boiling point of hard water as opposed to soft. Actually there is some debate about the best temperature for water for tea; some say it should be just off the boil or else it will scald the tea. Personally I believe fully boiling water is best for black tea. But other teas like Green, Jasmine, Oolong and some others should have water well under boiling; around 80C.

Re altitude you don't have to go as far as the Andes or Himalayas; I remember the first time I went to the Alps and was camped at around 2000m we attempted to have boiled eggs for breakfast. We boiled them for 4 minutes and it was a total failure - didn't look like it had been cooked at all - in the end we found we needed 7 to 8 minutes.
 
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