I've personally resorted to using a thermal camera for green/white tea water temperature. I'm aware it's a little overkill however!

Most now use a different method. The thermal cutoff has problems when the air pressure is lower than expected. It can get to a rolling boil, but never turn off.

Most now use the presence of steam coming off the liquid. This means it gets to a boil, no matter what temperature that actually is. I've seen a demo where they put alcohol in, and it worked fine, despite boiling at only 78°C.

the day we started using LGBTQ electronics is the day that we invented precision tea

Normal kettles have a piece of bi-metal that chabges its shape and thereby triggers the switch once it's getting hot enough. This happens in my experience with a delay of around 10 seconds.

Well, that clarifies things a bit. If there's mould growing everywhere, it probably came from outside and went through all the layers. Clearly, the plastic wasn't hermetically sealed when mould was able to get everywhere like that. It may look sealed, but it obviously wasn't rated for anything beyond looking good.

There was mold outside the box and a little inside the box, as well as on the outside of the packets, and inside the packets. Mold was also on just about every object in the room. This all happened within a window of 6 months or so. I think it would be an unlikely coincidence if mold were also introduced in the packaging process and that it would hit at the same moment (after I consumed about half the tea before stashing it in the humid room, which was not moldy).

I would argue that the mould spores got in during manufacturing. Those bags don’t go through an autoclave before shipping, so there could be anything inside. All they need to grow is water and heat, both of which can penetrate plastic. All it takes is a single spore to make a colony.

It’s an example of wasteful packaging that faced tough conditions. The tea wasn’t designed to survive mistreatment like that.

Microwaves have a pretty bad energy efficiency of 50%. The energy wasted is still very minor but the generation has a high ecological awareness.

I thought I was committing heresy by using the office hydroboil unit rather than the kettle, but this is just wild.

Ok, thanks for the reply!

Well the herbal was great so haven't ordered any tea as yet as was seeing if anybody had any experience with them. Good range of teas at least.

Never heard of them. How was it?