Have you had a problem with smelly kettle water?

It’s hard to make recommendations – because the “smelly kettles” problem does not seem to affect all kettles and/or all households.

A friend of mine recently replaced her kettle with a £6 plastic bodied budget offering from Tesco. As a consumer of tea at her house, I must say that I cannot detect any problems with it at all.

But who knows – maybe the exact same kettle in a different house – or another kettle of the same design but from different batches of raw materials – might exhibit the problem.

Hi,
The only kettle that I have found that does not taint the water is one model by Swan. It is their old-fashioned Swan traditional electric kettle.
It has the element on the inside of the kettle at the bottom.
I took out any plastic bits including the internal float for the level indicator and it works well.
No after-taste.
I have tried most of the big brands such as Russell Hobbs, Breville etc and they all pollute the contents and no amount of sodium bicarbonate or vinegar will stop this.
None of the manufacturer’s advice is correct regarding removing the problem.
I simply kept returning the kettles till I found one that was ok.

Is this the Swan polished aluminium kettle @ £3.10s.3d recommended in the 1957 Which magazine I have just received? 🙂 It was in second place of the recommended ones. They didn’t test for tainted water in those days, and 60 years later still don’t. Perhaps they should? 🙁

And I say your guessing is right Peter .

I know that kettles have been made in China for far longer than this problem has been apparent.

Hence I agree that the issue is most likely caused by relative recent developments in kettle manufacture.

The designs of kettles have not really changed, but both manufacturing processes and raw materials may have done.

Eco developments now encourage the much greater use of recycled materials in manufacturing – this may have the adverse trade-off that greater proportions of potentially volatile impurities have become present in the raw materials.

Continuing pressures to reduce the costs of materials may also lead to the same effect – cheaper materials are likely to be more impure, bringing in more “trace quantities” of unwanted substances.

On the button Derek , I was thinking the same but was looking for substantial proof as you know many posts i post get challenged , an I agree from me .

Duncan,

The problem here does seem to be getting proof.

in olden days, Which? ran their own labs and might have employed some clever folk who could have undertaken “post-mortems” of convicted “smelly kettles”. The trouble is, if the quest is to find trace quantities of smelly materials, the required analysis might not cheap or easy.

If enough kettles are affected, and get return for refunds, then our British kettle retailers and distributors (I won’t call them manufacturers) might eventually get motivated to do something about it.

My ~10 year old Asda kettle was probably made in China but its labelling does not state its country of origin. My spare kettle is a ~25 year old Phillps. They are/were a Dutch company, but it it was Made In England. But since then, consumer pressure for ever keener prices seems to have resulted in more and more consumer goods being made overseas.