9 ms·

I'm struggling to believe this can be done by taste; I could understand it if you went milk+teabag, then added water, but this seems like brewed tea in a pot ad

I'm struggling to believe this can be done by taste; I could understand it if you went milk+teabag, then added water, but this seems like brewed tea in a pot added to milk in cup v.s. milk added to brewed tea in a cup, which will get totally mixed either way...? The only difference I can think of in these situations is the temperature of the bottom of the cup. Can this really detectably affect the taste? Maybe she was subconsciously feeling this?

RugnirViking 3y ago
I do know that brewing tea with not-quite boiled water (70-80 degrees C) instead of boiled water 80-90 is recommended because otherwise the leaves go bitter. Perhaps if they were using water fresh from the kettle the milk-first way was preventing the "scalding"
- barrkel 3y ago
  Bitter tannins are what you want in black tea, they're smoothed out by milk but a good cup needs to be grippy in the mouth. Black tea made with anything less than boiling water is usually not very nice, in my experience.
  - gmac 3y ago
    100% this. Which is why, as a Brit, my heart still sinks when ordering tea in most European countries: nine times out of ten you get a glass of once-boiling water to add a teabag to.
    - psd1 3y ago
      Yep, a proper cuppa needs the water at absolute boiling. 1000m above sea level is high enough that I won't even bother trying to brew a cuppa; it just won't hit the spot. Milk is a factor. Weirdly for a country with a robust approach to pasteurisation, French milk is insipid. In China, I couldn't even get hot enough water for coffee. The places I stayed offered water almost cool enough for a bath. I had thought I was clever, buying ground coffee in Beijing, but I might as well have carried a bag of sand. Hey ho. Travel without privation is merely holiday.
      - barrkel 3y ago
        IME holiday without a moment of privation is less memorable, and if you're travelling with others, the struggle is bonding. If hot drinks are important to you, bring a travel kettle.
- gmac 3y ago
  I believe the point is to avoid overheating (any of) the milk, because that changes its flavour. For example, tea made with UHT milk tastes very different (and, to me, much less nice) than tea made with pasteurised milk. When adding the tea to the milk, the temperature of the milk will never exceed the final temperature of the mix. When adding the milk to the tea, it will.
Adverblessly 3y ago
The difference is that if the milk is added first, slowly pouring the prepared tea will gradually heat up the milk from its initial temperature to the final combined temperature. If the tea is added first, the milk will start at tea temperature and gradually cool down to the combined temperature. Imagining a scenario where the milk starts at 0 degrees and the tea at 100 and having a 1:10 milk:tea ratio, the difference is whether the milk gradually heats up 0->90 or gradually cools down 100->90. Thus, in one scenario the milk will experience more extreme temperatures that can "burn" it whereas in the other scenario it won't. To me at least I'd say the difference is barely noticeable, if I had to guess I'd say that in a blind tasting I might be able to get 55% of my guesses right.
- ChrisKnott 3y ago
  Does the milk really heat up passed the shared temperature, then back down? How does it "know" which way round it's mixed? Like if I did this on the ISS, put milk in a cup, then moved it up into a hot blob of tea, am I adding tea to milk or milk to tea?
  - thulle 3y ago
    Without the gravity you don't have the (same) resulting turbulence? I have no clue how fast the temperature equalizes or how long it takes to scorch milk at different temperatures, but I heard about this as a kid and made the following thought experiment. If I pour the milk first and then put in a single drop of tea, the milk at the surface of the drop would receive some flash heating, then equalize pretty fast to an average of their temperatures and then as the water turbulences away the resulting temperature would barely be above that of the original milk. If I pour the tea first and put in a single drop of milk, the relative masses would equalize the temperature of the milk to pretty close to boiling, and it's gonna require a lot of drops before the milk cools down again. Thus the time spent at higher temperature seems longer in the latter case. Assuming it matters for things like protein breakdown, and that those changes can affect the taste, then the question becomes: how slowly do we have to pour our tea for this to matter? I suspect I don't pour anywhere near slow enough.

RugnirViking 3y ago

I do know that brewing tea with not-quite boiled water (70-80 degrees C) instead of boiled water 80-90 is recommended because otherwise the leaves go bitter. Perhaps if they were using water fresh from the kettle the milk-first way was preventing the "scalding"

barrkel 3y ago
Bitter tannins are what you want in black tea, they're smoothed out by milk but a good cup needs to be grippy in the mouth. Black tea made with anything less than boiling water is usually not very nice, in my experience.
- gmac 3y ago
  100% this. Which is why, as a Brit, my heart still sinks when ordering tea in most European countries: nine times out of ten you get a glass of once-boiling water to add a teabag to.
  - psd1 3y ago
    Yep, a proper cuppa needs the water at absolute boiling. 1000m above sea level is high enough that I won't even bother trying to brew a cuppa; it just won't hit the spot. Milk is a factor. Weirdly for a country with a robust approach to pasteurisation, French milk is insipid. In China, I couldn't even get hot enough water for coffee. The places I stayed offered water almost cool enough for a bath. I had thought I was clever, buying ground coffee in Beijing, but I might as well have carried a bag of sand. Hey ho. Travel without privation is merely holiday.
    - barrkel 3y ago
      IME holiday without a moment of privation is less memorable, and if you're travelling with others, the struggle is bonding. If hot drinks are important to you, bring a travel kettle.
gmac 3y ago
I believe the point is to avoid overheating (any of) the milk, because that changes its flavour. For example, tea made with UHT milk tastes very different (and, to me, much less nice) than tea made with pasteurised milk. When adding the tea to the milk, the temperature of the milk will never exceed the final temperature of the mix. When adding the milk to the tea, it will.

Adverblessly 3y ago

The difference is that if the milk is added first, slowly pouring the prepared tea will gradually heat up the milk from its initial temperature to the final combined temperature. If the tea is added first, the milk will start at tea temperature and gradually cool down to the combined temperature. Imagining a scenario where the milk starts at 0 degrees and the tea at 100 and having a 1:10 milk:tea ratio, the difference is whether the milk gradually heats up 0->90 or gradually cools down 100->90. Thus, in one scenario the milk will experience more extreme temperatures that can "burn" it whereas in the other scenario it won't. To me at least I'd say the difference is barely noticeable, if I had to guess I'd say that in a blind tasting I might be able to get 55% of my guesses right.

ChrisKnott 3y ago
Does the milk really heat up passed the shared temperature, then back down? How does it "know" which way round it's mixed? Like if I did this on the ISS, put milk in a cup, then moved it up into a hot blob of tea, am I adding tea to milk or milk to tea?
- thulle 3y ago
  Without the gravity you don't have the (same) resulting turbulence? I have no clue how fast the temperature equalizes or how long it takes to scorch milk at different temperatures, but I heard about this as a kid and made the following thought experiment. If I pour the milk first and then put in a single drop of tea, the milk at the surface of the drop would receive some flash heating, then equalize pretty fast to an average of their temperatures and then as the water turbulences away the resulting temperature would barely be above that of the original milk. If I pour the tea first and put in a single drop of milk, the relative masses would equalize the temperature of the milk to pretty close to boiling, and it's gonna require a lot of drops before the milk cools down again. Thus the time spent at higher temperature seems longer in the latter case. Assuming it matters for things like protein breakdown, and that those changes can affect the taste, then the question becomes: how slowly do we have to pour our tea for this to matter? I suspect I don't pour anywhere near slow enough.