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I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. OXO knows how to market. They’re in league with companies like Breville in this regard. The box that the Adjustable Temperature Pour-Over Kettle comes in is jam packed with good information and nice photography about the product. It’s detailed on all four sides without being overwhelming, and provides good info while sitting on the store shelf.
The back of the box has tons of relevant information, including: temperature control, balanced design, the built in temperature guide, the automatic features of the kettle, the count up timer, the gooseneck spout, the stainless steel materials, and more. It also has a 2 year warranty, which is double what many other kettles of a similar nature have.
Open the top flap and you see additional instructions and information on two interior flaps. On the left are instructions for rinsing and cleaning the kettle before it’s first regular use. On the right are simplified instructions for using the kettle, including setting temperature from Fahrenheit to Celsius, dialing in the water temperature you want, and how to start it heating up.
Open those two flaps, and you see a full manual and the cardboard inserts protecting the kettle and its base. So what’s inside the box?
- The Kettle, which holds up to 1l of water and features a silicone grippy and comfortable handle.
- The Lid, which also has a silicone insert and a grippy feel.
- The Base, with cord (and a place to store excess cord); it has a plastic overlay sticker showing what the temperature readout looks like, so remove that.
- The Manual, which is detailed and also includes instructions on how to descale.
The kettle itself has a similar silhouette as OXO’s stovetop pour over kettles. More importantly, it also has the same pouring spout as OXO’s other kettles, which is absolutely superb for controlling your water pour. The kettle is all stainless steel inside, save for the little silicone grommet inside around the temperature probe. It also has a 1500W heating element in the base (industry leading: the competitor kettles are 1000 to 1200W generally, and this is important, see below).
Even packed with the heating element, the counterbalanced handle (more on that below) and other bits, the kettle itself isn’t overly heavy. It weighs in at 715 grams, or just over 1.5 pounds (for comparison, OXO’s stovetop gooseneck kettle with temperature probe (but no embedded electrics) weighs 466g). I also like the fact that the lower portion of the kettle itself where the heating element and electronics sit is very slim and seems to almost disappear. It is a bit of eye trickery though, because when you look inside the digital electric OXO kettle and inside one of their stovetop kettles, you can see the stovetop versions are much deeper inside..
The electronic base that the kettle sits on is excellently designed. It is sleek and low profile, but still manages to include a cord wrap area underneath for most of the kettle’s 28″ long cord. There’s only one control to manage — it’s a rotary dial press button right up front — and it should be fairly straightforward to manage the clicks, long presses, and rotation to do all the control options on this kettle. The base also has printed temperature suggestions for various types of tea and coffee, as a ready to go reference on your countertop.
The lid is nice too, and in some ways an upgrade from OXO’s stovetop kettles. It features OXO’s signature grippy feel for the handle, but also surrounding the handle is more black silicone, which keeps the lid cool to touch when the kettle is doing its thing. Just don’t touch the metal parts.
Also attached to the handle of the kettle when you take it out is a simple half fold information card (I assume to provide information when the kettle is on display at a department store). It echos much of the box’s marketing info and some basic instructions for use.
The range of the kettle is, in Fahrenheit, 104 to 212 degrees. Why would you want 104 degrees? Well get this: it just so happens, 104F is a good water temperature for the starting water for mixing dough for bread and other items with yeast. 104F is also a good starting temperature to create a bath for breast milk for babies (which should be administered at around 98F). I don’t know if OXO intended these things, but there it is.
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Before you use anything that touches brewing coffee, you should make sure it’s sparkly clean. This kettle’s no exception. Before putting it to use, you should do what I did: take a damp cloth and wipe the entire interior of the kettle. Then fill it to the (nicely visible) max line, and brew water to 212F in it. Then pour that out, and repeat. Maybe 3x (because this kettle is fast – more on that below!). At this point, the kettle is ready to use.
I already had some experience using OXO’s stovetop gooseneck kettle (with temperature gauge!), so I knew this kettle would provide an awesome, controlled pour for artisan coffee brewing. What I didn’t know until I first powered it on is how freaking fast it is. I’ve been using a Bonavita Variable Temperature kettle for years now, and one of my biggest peeves with that kettle is how slow it is, especially in the last 10F of temperature climb.
The Bonavita takes easily as long to go from 195F to 205F, as it does going from 60F (tap water temperature) to 195F. The Bonavita Variable Kettle takes longer than my gas rangetop does in heating up the same amount of water; it’s that slow.
Well, I was completely surprised — in a very good way — to see how lightning fast the OXO Brew kettle is. In my timing tests, it routinely took less than 4 minutes to go from cold tap water to 205F, our target temperature. This is easily 2x faster than my gas range does at the “blast” setting for its flame, and faster than any other electric kettle I currently have. Later on in my testing, I was able to find out a bit more about how OXO achieves this, and how the kettle “cheats” a little bit.
The controls are relatively easy to figure out if you’re not the type to RTFM (you should always RTFM). Press the button once to activate the kettle’s control panel. Dial in the temperature you want between 40C and 100C (104F and 212F), bearing in mind it’ll be set to the most recent temperature setting you used; press again to start the kettle heating up. Easy peesy. Once the kettle hits your set temperature, it will maintain that temperature for 30 minutes, unless you cancel it by pressing the control button, turning the kettle off.
Getting to some of the more advanced features takes some figuring out (but not much): When powering up, press a long press and see an option to switch from F to C by turning the dial. If you want to activate the timer (which becomes available for use once the kettle reaches your set temperature), you have to press and hold the control button for 1 second. Press and hold for another second to stop the timer and reset it back to 0 (the timer’s max time is 10 minutes).
The OXO Brew kettle will keep your set temperature for 30 minutes (unless you cancel it) and will also stay in “keep warm” mode if you remove the kettle and then place it back on its base within 60 seconds. The idea here is, you fire up the kettle, get it to 205F for pour over, remove it and pour a bit to bloom up your bed of coffee, then put the kettle back on the base (within that 60 second time frame). The kettle will maintain that 205F while you wait the 30-45 second “pause” for the coffee bloom. Then remove the kettle again and do the main pours over your bed of coffee.
This is a nice feature, but I think it would be even better if it were 90 seconds (so you can do a 1 min pour, put it back on the base and have it maintain your water temperature), or if you could adjust that yourself, dialing in between 0 seconds and 120 seconds or longer.
This is a fair amount of info for the first use, but let’s get into more details now.
This is a very, very comfortable kettle to use. OXO likes to push the word “balanced” in the marketing for this kettle, and they’re spot on. The handle feels awesome and has the right amount of heft and angles and grippy feel to make it a joy to use and control. The weight, for an electric kettle with a built in heating element, is really good too.
The pouring spout is pretty much “best in class”. It’s the same one they use on their stovetop kettles and its a winner. You can do a lot of precise control over the water flow, to the point of getting a straight drop from the spout, or an angled pour for higher volume, higher velocity water flow.
The kettle is taller than other 1l kettles, but I think that’s because OXO really engineered everything to work in balance and control the water flowing out of the gooseneck. The handle’s angle, tied in with the kettle’s vertical height, tied in again to the spout’s high angle profile and excellent pouring portion all make it just work fantastic for controlled, “artisan” pours into your pour over brewer of choice.
The construction of the kettle is solid and secure. It does not feel cheap at all. It’s all stainless steel save for the base and the silicone insert in the lid and the handle. Where the Bonavita always felt a bit thin and cheap, I don’t get this feeling from the OXO Brew kettle at all.
The base’s controls are simple and “Apple like” (Steve Jobs era) in that there’s just one control input: a rotary, push dial. Everything the kettle does, from being turned on, to selecting temperature, to starting the timer, to cancelling the 30 minute “keep warm” feature are controlled from that one dial. It’s well done.
There’s only one thing about the controls on this kettle I don’t like and am surprised with. OXO is known for their grippy handles and control surfaces, so it’s surprising they didn’t put a grippy surface on the control dial for when you rotate it.
The dial is just just plastic, and as such is a bit harder to grip, and can be slippery if your hands are wet. This is a minor thing, but one area where I think OXO forgot their design ethos. Otherwise the base is nicely constructed. The lights are bright but not annoyingly so. The flashes vs solid of the light ring around the control dial help understand the modes the kettle is in.
When you’re using the kettle, it will do a double beep once it hits your programmed water temperature, then it goes into a kind of standby mode, where it will occasionally fire up again at lower power to maintain your programmed temperature. The kettle will do this for 30 minutes.
Is that not long enough? There’s two tricks to prolong it. First, if you remove the kettle from the base and put it back on, it will “reset” the 30 minute timer. Second, you can just turn the kettle off (pressing the control dial) and turn it on again. The kettle will want a temperature input, but it also recalls your last setting. Press the button again, and it will maintain that programmed temperature for another 30 minutes.
Before we get into how fast this kettle is, and how accurate the temperature controls are, I do want to talk again about the 1500 watt element inside this kettle, and a 3 prong, 28″ long cord and plug. It’s industry leading for 110V kettle systems (as far as gooseneck kettles go), and will come close to maxing out a 15 amp standard circuit. You definitely do not want to run an espresso machine on the same circuit, at the same time.
One of the important things for OXO with this kettle was speed, and the 1500 watt element delivers that, as you’ll see below.
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So… the OXO Brew Kettle is fast. Seriously fast. It approaches European, 220V heat up speeds.
With 1l of cold (65F) tap water to 205F (good starting temperature for pour over) taking about 4:10, you’ll be hard pressed to find another 110V kettle that works as fast.
Here’s a series of temperature tests I did, starting with 65F (18.3C) starting water, up to 205F. Why 205F and not 212F (100C) boiling? Because I wanted to see not only how the kettles did when they had to slow down before hitting their set temperatures, but also how accurate they were at actually stopping at the set temperatures. Here’s the tests.
| 100F | 150F | 200F | 205F | Measured | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Timing 1 | 1:16 | 2:41 | 4:04 | 4:14 | 208.5 |
| Timing 2 | 1:14 | 2:38 | 4:03 | 4:13 | 207.9 |
| Timing 3 | 1:16 | 2:40 | 4:05 | 4:15 | 208.2 |
| Timing 4 | 1:15 | 2:39 | 4:04 | 4:13 | 208.2 |
| Average | 1:15 | 2:39 | 4:04 | 4:13 | 208.2 |
One interesting thing to note is the short time between hitting 200F and 205F in the tests. I could hear a barely audible ‘click” as the heating element shut off in the kettle (more accurately, it powers down to a lower mode) at 5F before my set temperature. So the kettle floats up to 205F from 200F based on the continuing residual thermal action from its heating element.
The real question though is, is it actually accurate? Well… it’s accurate in that, if you set a temperature, you’re going to get that temperature for sure – nothing below the temperature you set. But it will most likely be above your set temperature. To find this out, I ran the tests again, and this time, I also measured the water temperatures inside the kettle 25 seconds after it double beeped (to indicate my set temperatures have been reached), and here’s the results.
| 100F | 150F | 200F | 205F | End Temp | Temp +25sec | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Timing 5 | 1:16 | 2:40 | 4:04 | 4:15 | 207.7 | 206.1 |
| Timing 6 | 1:14 | 2:38 | 4:03 | 4:13 | 207.9 | 206.4 |
| Timing 7 | 1:14 | 2:39 | 4:05 | 4:14 | 207.8 | 206.2 |
| Timing 8 | 1:15 | 2:39 | 4:04 | 4:13 | 208.1 | 206.5 |
| Average | 1:14 | 2:39 | 4:04 | 4:13 | 207.875 | 206.3 |
So… not a huge deal at all for pour over coffee. You’ll easily lose that 2-3F of higher water temperatures just through the act of pouring the water (and then some). But these slightly higher temperatures than the number you’ve set can possibly affect more delicate teas. To see how the kettle performed at lower temperature settings, I ran a series of more informal tests heating water to 150F and 175F, to see how much over these amounts the OXO kettle got, and in my testing, the kettle was routinely 2-4 degrees fahrenheit higher than the programmed amount.
The good news is, armed with this information, you can adjust if it’s really crucial to you. If you want actual 205F stable water temperatures as soon as the devices goes into warming mode, set your water temperature a bit lower — say 202F — and you’ll get that. The problem with doing that is this: the kettle will now try to maintain the temperature at 202F, not the 205F you want.
It can get complicated. I say, don’t sweat the details. I’ll take the heat up speed any day over being a few degrees off (higher) on the initial water temperature once the kettle’s heated up. Within a few minutes, it’ll be rock steady at 205F inside. And keep in mind, competitor kettles, like the Stagg EKG or the Bonavita digital gooseneck can take between 50% and 100% more time to reach the same temperature.
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We love this OXO Brew gooseneck kettle at CoffeeGeek. I had a few coffee buddies over to check it out, and all were thinking about buying one after using it, including one that owns a beautiful Stagg EKG kettle. The biggest flaw is that it temporarily overshoots its programmed temperatures, and maybe could use some of OXO’s famous rubberized grip around the control dial.
Everything else about the OXO Brew Kettle is golden. It’s safe to say it’s the fastest kettle in its volume class. It has excellent fit and finish. It handles super well and is extremely comfortable. The gooseneck design and spout are probably the best I’ve ever tested. If you want hyper controlled pours, this one will deliver. I liked it in testing so much, it’s replaced even the stovetop OXO gooseneck kettle in my daily use, even though the digital one heats less water. I even appreciate the 104F lowest temperature setting, which I use all the time when mixing dough for bread.
The price is excellent too, for what you get. It’s competitively priced against other mass brand offerings, and in some cases, half the price of some boutique digital pour over kettles. And there’s the two year warranty to factor in. All these things combined add up to us giving this kettle a “Best in Class” Rating of 95 points.
Addendum 2024
We’ve been using this same kettle every single day since purchasing it back in 2019, using it as much as eight times a day (average is about 5). Over that time, we’ve cycled this kettle at least 12,000 times, and it still functions well. It is still just as fast, and quiet to operate.
Also, OXO updated this kettle after our review was published to include a much better timer function, which all current models have.
You can buy this kettle for under $100 today.
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DesignHandle, controls, pour spout, balance, comfort, base features, everything is first rate.
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UsabilityHandles well, pours well, feels comfortable and balanced in the hand. There’s no better kettle on the market.
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FeaturesFeature loaded, though with super simple controls. Perhaps some wireless connectivity would make it even better.
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PerformanceFastest gooseneck kettle to boil, on the market, corded or not. Beats competitor kettles by 50% or more in speed.
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Value vs. CostExcellent value for a temperature controlled kettle; on par with mass market competitors, beats the pants off boutique kettle pricing.
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Quality of BuildStands the test of time – we’ve cycled ours over 12,000 times and it still operates as new.
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Service / WarrantyIt’s OXO, and they’re a big corporation that won’t care about you once the 1 year warranty is over.
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Included in the BoxThe cord storage feature is nice, the instructions are great, and the temperature guide on the base is a bonus.
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Resale ValueResale on these is okay – they usually go for 50-70% of original value depending on condition.
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OverallBest pour over kettle you can buy today, bar none.
Where to Buy
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