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Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

I've been a dedicated tea drinker since my teens, so this is great news.

OTOH what I worry about is oesophageal cancer. Not sure of the prevalence.

Don't know any stats from the top of my head, but I recall that oesophageal cancer is caused by drinking _hot_ tea, not by drinking tea per sé.

I usually cool my tea with a splash of milk. But I do then drink it very quickly at an elevated temperature.

Avoid drinking liquids hotter than 140 f.

One interesting "test" - take a sip of the liquid, and it does not seem that hot, put your finger in your mouth with the liquid and your finger might feel too hot.

140 degrees Fahrenheit = 60 degrees Celsius

As another data point, this is generally hotter than most “hot” water taps in your kitchen or bathroom.

No. Please check for legionellae if your warm water is cooler than 60 deg Celsius.

NO. 60 degrees minimum for storage, but 50 degrees maximum at the tap. The latter temperature is the relevant one here, because that’s the user experience.

https://www.sa.gov.au/topics/energy-and-environment/safe-ene....

https://build.com.au/hot-water-system-regulations

https://www.vba.vic.gov.au/consumers/guides/hot-water-safety

140 degrees Fahrenheit = 344 kelvin

Apparently it's more like 333 K.

Yeah but it's a dry kelvin

> Avoid drinking liquids hotter than 140 f.

I often drink plain hot water (pot from kettle into cup; no trip through the teapot). I have always assumed it is safe. Perhaps I should reconsider?

> drinking hot tea, not by drinking tea per se.

It is unclear to me that there is any way to drink tea than other than piping hot.

I have heard horror stories that suggest people have attempted to drink cold tea but I figure such tales are merely intended to provoke disgust.

Cold tea does indeed provoke disgust. Iced tea, on the other hand, is quite its own art form.

As a programmer, every hot drink is only hot for the first few sips; all others range from lukewarm to room temperature.

grab yourself one of these: https://www.nespresso.com/au/en/order/accessories/original/t...

This has been the most successful keep hot mug I've ever bought (and I've bought a lot). This thing can keep a hot drink hot for a looooong time.

Indeed, iced tea is all over the U.S. South, where they put in enough sugar to blow out other organs, but at least the liver is saved.

Copious amounts of high fructose corn syrup will assuredly also blow out your liver.

And probably sooner.

I've always found tea acceptable at a wide range of temperatures. Room temperature to boiling, it's all good, same as water. (But not same as red wine or beer, the other 2 types of liquid I will drink.)

I do admit this rule does very much not apply when mixing tea with milk!

Cold tea infusion my boy - a nice strong ice tea on a hot summer day is one of life’s little pleasures. Splash of lemonade optional. Sugar very much optional.

Sugar is optional in tea the way screaming is optional in a library.

I love my morning infusion of green tea with stevia leaves. I take the first cup hot and then prepare a 2 litter jug with "cold infusion" and ice for the rest if the day .

Some people loathe the flavour of stevia leaf, but I am completely used to it by now.

I guess.. why? Do you dislike green tea by itself? I love iced teas, and for me any sweetness detracts.

To each their own, it’s just so foreign I can’t imagine.

"Tea, Earl Grey, hot"

Now this worried me. I love my tea — the milk tea without sugar. And I can’t drink it unless it’s simmering hot. Sometimes I reheat it if I forget about it and it became slightly cooler.

Green tea/etc (ie without milk) however I can drink even ice cold.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32740163/

Compared to those who consumed <300 g/month tea leaves at ≤65°C, those who consumed more than 300 g/month tea leave at >65°C had a more than 1.8-fold higher risk of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma for both green tea and black tea.

As someone who doesn't know much about epidemiology, is 180% relative risk considered scary for something with a fairly low prevalence such as esophageal cancer?

We are the most tea-drinking country in the world afaik, Turkey. We’re fine, but one particular city (Erzurum) has a weird tradition of putting a sugar under the tongue and drinking the tea very hot to (probably?) dissolve it easily. They drink it almost out of the teapot, boiling-hot. They have very high rates of esophagous cancer.

What of the fluorine in it? Blank tea has more than 6x as much as fluorinated water, with white and green tea having the least.

This comment ruined my day but I appreciate it nonetheless. This wasn't on my radar at all.

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