The kettle doesn’t have whitish looking residue though. It’s spotty specks of grey that leaves chalky white powder on my finger when I wipe them, is that still limestone?
Oh God, I never saw the rest of the no poop challenge. From “Help me not poop for three days,” to “Help I ate gummy worms and have to not poop for three days,” to “I didn’t poop for three days and now I can’t poop help.”
Kitchens can be very greasy places. Do you ever cook food in a pan near your kettle? It could also be from whatever container you poured the hot water in.
What container is the water in? If it is a mixing cup or glass cup, there will likely be residual fats that linger after washing. There are also various grease,s fats, and other lipids in you water pipes, faucets, and the kitchen air since particles linger around. Everything in a kitchen will start to develop a small film of grease if it isn’t cleaned constantly. It’s not harmful and you have been consuming it for literally your entire life
Looks like a glass jar to contain water. Previous tenants could have used them to store literally anything so yeah, residual fats doesn’t sound that surprising now that I think about it.
Maybe I should be paying more attention to the stuff around me instead of only while I’m overseas 🙃
Something else I’ve noticed about my own kettle that might be contributing. I store my kettle very near or sometimes just on my stovetop. If you fry anything nearby, even with a wipe down/cleaning you can still get small amounts of fat splatter on enough of the kettle that some of it may be making it’s way into the spout or underside of the lid that then gets mixed in by the steam inside when you boil water next.
The water from the tap has a certain amount of calcium in it, it’s not fat. That act of boiling water will make it so a some of the calcium carbonate will precipitate out of the water onto your kettle. This can come loose over time and with use of the kettle and form little flakes in the water. It’s nothing that’s not already in the drinking water and is perfectly safe
This looks like a specific kind of… fungus?..aging?. I can’t find an English word for it, but it looks like the black spots you get in clothes when you leave them in a wet pile for too long. In Dutch, is called “spocht”.
a lot of the reviews for the kettle I bought on amazon had reviews that complained about this stuff, but we buy filtered water in those refillable 5 gallon jugs and havent had an issue, we have hard water out the tap so i try to avoid using that for cooking, but also I wouldnt trust a used kettle, Id imagine its like the hotel coffee makers where people probably poop in it
Wow I just learned of Hard Water vs Soft Water. I googled and yeah its a moderately hard Water area. So I assume this is normal (or at least nothing to be alarmed about)?
Yup, completely normal. I have hard water and my kettles get calcium buildup after a handful of uses. Soak with white vinegar to remove the buildup. Or if you’re like me and forget until last second, boil 50/50 vinegar/water and deal with the vinegar smell, lol.
Ahh thank you! Kinda freaked out seeing so much weird stuff on the water’s surface. Out of curiosity would regular consumption of such water have any adverse effects?
Scaleaway Household Descaler for £1.35 will (dis)solve the problem in less than one hour. I'm never going back to using vinegar, this stuff works much better. ;)
I’m guessing your UK, but in America it’s a lot worse and most people need salt exchangers.
Just think of it as “mineral water”.
But I think other people talking about residual fat are probably right. If you have hard water, you’ll notice a white chalky substance on faucets and stuff, or if you leave a glass of water out to evaporate, it’ll leave behind the minerals.
Very good to know! Just trying to avoid potential stomach upsets while overseas. I’ll be gone in a week or so, so not concerned about the other stuff :P
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