Hot Water in a Hotel Room Without the Coffee Maker
You don't trust the room's coffee maker, or there isn't one. What flight crews pack to heat water for coffee or tea in a hotel room instead.
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It's six in the morning in a hotel room. The only way to make a hot drink is the coffee maker on the dresser. You've heard the stories about what the last guest did with it. Or there's no coffee maker at all, and no kettle either.
If you travel for work and won't use the room's coffee maker, or you know the next room won't have a kettle, flight attendants have an answer. They've been packing it for years. There are two versions, and one of them is a loop of metal on a cord.
Why flight crews won't use the room's coffee maker
Ask a crew what they pack for a trip and a travel kettle comes up fast. One attendant's reason is that you can't trust the hotel's coffee maker. The reply under it is from a colleague who loves theirs.
Over in r/onebag, somebody asked whether anyone really brings a collapsible kettle on a trip. The answers were the same story from the other side of the aisle.
All you have to see is that someone boiled their socks in the coffee pot maker in the hotel room for me to invest in one. Love it.
u/Dragonflypics, in r/onebag
Whether anyone has seen the socks with their own eyes is another matter. What they share is a view that the in-room machines are often not cleaned, so the water out of them isn't something you'd want in your tea. That, and a liking for a decent coffee before heading out on a work trip.
The collapsible kettle crews carry
The thing most of them pack is a collapsible kettle. The body is silicone and concertinas down flat, so it's a disc in the bag and a kettle on the desk. The base holds the heating element, and the cord pulls out of it.
One attendant got theirs years ago and takes it on every trip, work and personal. It's nearly ten years old and they can't link it any more, which is a fair summary of the whole category. The idea lasts. The listings come and go.
Another says theirs never leaves their bag. It's the same one a colleague in the thread put forward as the kettle that hasn't let them down yet.
One crew member links the kettle they own, the Loutytuo collapsible kettle. They'd had it for over a year with no complaints when they posted.
The detail two people pick out is the cord. It comes completely unattached from the base, so there's nothing sticking out to snap off in a bag. An attendant shopping for one liked the same thing, a power cord that detaches from the main unit.
Flying abroad changes the choice. One attendant picked the Tayama collapsible kettle because it's dual voltage, so it works on their international layovers instead of whatever the room has. A kettle for international travel needs to take both 110 and 220 volts. Check the listing says so before it goes in the bag.
The immersion coil: cheaper and slower
The other answer is older and takes up far less room. An immersion heater, like the Norpro immersion heater, is a loop of metal on a cord. You drop the loop into a mug of water, plug it in and wait. In r/onebag the case for and against came in one line: they're cheap and slow, and can never be left unattended.
Slow doesn't mean short-lived. One attendant used theirs for eight years before retiring, and it never broke. In a later thread the same person says it lasted at least a decade before they gave it away, with one rule. Let it cool down gently, or it breaks much faster.
Another crew member grew up with one and puts the lifespan at years, as long as you never plug it in while it's out of the water.
There are limits. One attendant found theirs good for small quantities, not the half-litre of coffee they make every day.
An r/onebag member lifted theirs out of the water before unplugging it. The element glowed red in seconds and smelled like an electrical fire. Unplug first, then lift.
Kettle or coil?
- How much water at once. A coil heats a mug. Two cups of tea, or a pour-over, is a kettle job.
- Whether you'll walk away from it. A coil can't be left on its own. That's the price of it being a bare element.
- Where you're flying. The collapsible kettle an attendant picked for layovers abroad is the dual-voltage one. The Norpro coil is 120 V only, which means US and Canadian outlets, so check before you buy a coil for overseas.
- Space. The coil is the smaller of the two by a long way. A collapsed kettle is still a disc with a base.
- Pouring. A kettle has a spout. With a coil, the mug is the kettle, and whatever you're brewing happens in there too.
People who'd rather pack something else
Not everyone in r/onebag wants silicone. One member packs a full-size steel kettle stuffed with clean clothes, so it takes almost no extra room. Another travels with a small steel dual-voltage kettle that doesn't fold but packs with things inside. They've boiled eggs in it, too.
One more skips the kettle because the heating element is fused to the pot and it never feels properly clean. They carry a tiny plug-in pan instead, which also cooks dumplings. A different problem, and a different piece of kit.
Start with how much water you want at once. For a mug of tea or instant coffee at a time, a plain coil like the Norpro immersion heater does it. Stay in the room, and unplug it before you lift it out. Anything more than a mug, or anything you'd rather pour, and the collapsible kettle is what the crews have settled on. Buy the dual-voltage kind when your trips cross an ocean.
