Breville HotCup Hot Water Dispenser, 1.7 Litres with 3 KW

Bought this for my mum after an operation and not able to lift, and this is ideal for her. Quick and quiet, my only criticism is that it doesn’t get as hot as a kettle so you need to drink it quickly

I’ve had the unit for several months now and it is still, faithfully, chugging along. I’ve held off from writing this review for quite some time to ensure a fair appraisal.

Working from home, as many of us do these days, I make a lot of cups of coffee, tea and herbal infusions throughout the day and night. Accordingly, my faithful kettle of 15 years was tired of the constant badgering and decided it going to go out with a bang … literally! So, what’s a lockdown detainee supposed to do? I had to find a replacement if I was going to survive. I had been toying with the idea of replacing said kettle with a one-cup system for some time, but I faltered and forgot about it, I ‘ummed and I ‘ahhed and then the kettle made the decision for me.

I chose this unit, for what I am sure were perfectly sensible reasons at the time, and it tries hard to do the job it was designed to, always eager to top me up when the need for caffeine arises. One particular pleasure of this device over a kettle is that I throw a teabag or spoon of coffee in a cup, place it under the spout, push the button and wander about for a few seconds until I hear the click. I just need to add milk and I’m good to go. No heaving a lumpy kettle from it’s cordless cradle, no spills, leaks or dribbles, easy-peasy.

I seem to fill up the water several times a day, which is simple enough with the help of an old 1 litre soda-stream bottle which I keep close by for such occasions, but it just doesn’t seem to be enough capacity for me, 3 or so cups later I’m standing at the pump filling ‘er up again. It’s okay, I get by with topping it up but if it just had a bigger tank I wouldn’t feel like I’m constantly tending to it. That’s an odd attitude to have, as I never thought about having to top the kettle up every time I fancied a cup of joe, now it has become some sort of chore, a laborious vestige of a bygone kettle-filling age.

Now for all the water I so grudgingly pour into this this little blighter, the next issue is how much hot water comes out the business end. Unfortunately, it’s just shy of what I need, not just a little, but an annoying amount. Perhaps I need to get some smaller cups, the ones I have aren’t exactly buckets, sort of regular size. It is possible to push the button again to top up that last little bit and hit the cancel button when it reaches the mark, but it seems daft and wasteful as it has to boil another “serving” for just to make up the difference. I did say it was an annoying amount, right? There’s no obvious way to adjust this, I’ll have to investigate further in case there’s some secret trick in the manual … now where did I put that?

So we have the not quite right amount of water, but what does it taste like? Well like water, of course, it’s not the messiah it’s a very naughty … um … hot cup dispenser! Fortunately for me, I get fresh water direct from the Scottish mountains which tastes just as good as it sounds and there’s no noticable difference after putting it through the machine. If you drag your pale through the Thames, however, don’t expect this appliance to magically produce a cup that tastes of freshly squeezed unicorns. I should also mention that I obediently followed the commissionning procedure in the manual before plugging in the mains and firing it up. I don’t know how much of a difference this made, but it doesn’t take long and might help prime the thing before boiling the first cup.

Boil, of course, is a generously misleading word, it does make a little bit of the familiar whooshing noise as it gets to work but it isn’t designed to boil the water, but close enough. It’s not quite as hot as I’d like, just a little hotter would make it perfect, and that seems to sum this device up, it needs a little bit more of everything … more capacity, more control, more better!

Now, it’s easy to think of all the flaws without considering just how much I have come to rely on this piece of kit. Is it deserving of a 5-star review? Absolutely not. Do I regret buying it? Not at all, even if my tea cups are too big, or I’m constantly filling it, or I want it just that little bit hotter … the truth is, it seems crazy that I didn’t get rid of that kettle years ago, I’m glad it exploded, it helped me evolve from the old ways. Now this hotcup water dispenser isn’t perfect, it has a stupid name, it isn’t for more than 1-2 players and certainly doesn’t make you more attractive to the opposite sex but I’m glad I bought it, even if I could buy 4 white-label kettles for the same price. The point is simply this, I don’t want a kettle any more, the HotCup has changed the way I think about making a hot beverage and I wouldn’t want to be without it.