I tried heating the steel tube with hot water and wore a rubber glove to get a better grip on the end cap. No joy, it won’t budge, even with all my strength. (I am man, and not of slight build…)
Smell is still lingering, enough for my wife to demand that I don’t use the Anova in the kitchen and do my cooking outside.
Last night, I had the cooker doing it’s thing on a timer. The timer expired, the Anova did its “three-beep” thing to let me know that it’s done, and the iPhone app correctly told me that cooking is finished. I was sitting at the table at the time and decided to let things cook for another 15 minutes or so because I still had some other things in the oven that weren’t ready yet.
Boyoh, was I in for an experience. The Anova kept doing its three beeps every few seconds, and nothing I did on the phone app managed to stop it. The beeps just kept coming. I figured “OK, I’ll just start another cook at the same temperature with a 15-minute timer, so it restarts, that should stop the beeps.” Nope, it didn’t. Anova still beeping.
Eventually I walked over to the Anova and fiddled with the touch controls. That stopped the beeps. And, man, the UI for the touch controls is a complete design fail. Not being able to change the timer without changing between Fahrenheit and Celsius? Really? Whoever came up with this was clueless. The one thing that people will set only once and never again is the temperature unit. The one thing that they will want to change all the time is the timer. Yet, to change the timer, I need to press and hold for eight seconds, and to change the unit, I need to press and hold three seconds? Hello? Especially seeing that the timer setting cannot be reached without also changing the unit? The sensible thing would have been to require a three-second press to reach the timer, and an eight-second press to change the unit.
I noticed that there was an update for the Anova app for the iPhone this morning. The explanations for what was changed were singularly unhelpful. Is it possible to get a description of what (if anything) has changed with respect to operating the unit? Is it possible again to calibrate the unit, or is that still disabled?
I’ll contact customer service today and see whether they’ll exchange it. The combination of the smell and the locked-on end cap is a little too much for me to just let it slide. Hopefully, it’ll be possible to get one that doesn’t smell.