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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

One can become just as adept at stirring the correct number of times. Its a ubiquitous skill too.

Also, this myth about 'burning the milk' - I get my latte at 180 degrees, and the milk is not 'scalded' or 'burned' or any other thing - its just fine.

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To make coffee, you need water just below boiling. Commercial brewers are set at about 200 degrees. To make a proper pot of tea, you need boiling water.

I suppose there is a prescribed direction of stirring?

This depends entirely on which hemisphere said tea-maker is located.

North/South or East/West?

The milk in a latte is typically gradually heated to its temperature, whereas when cold milk is added to hot tea, it changes temperature rapidly. This causes the Maillard Reaction, fundamentally changing its flavour. This is like the difference between cooking a steak at immediately high temperature vs gradually increasing temperature. Same resulting temperature but one is delicious and the other is brown and floppy.

0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction

Did you actually read the link you provided? The Maillard reaction doesn't appear to be relevent to milk and tea combining at the sub-boiling temperatures discussed. Unless you have another source that actually supports your statement?

Yes, I read it - I was rather hoping no one else would, it seemed just about plausible enough to be convincing.

Refreshing candor.

This is a religious matter and as such no tactics are off limits. Tea first is wrong.

That article has a lot of details without actually describing how the reaction is achieved. You say its by rapid heating instead of gradual heating. So a latte is safe. Have to get the word out to barristas nationwide, since I have to explain to every one that nothing bad is going to happen to my latte.

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