Why do so many people drink very hot tea – and how do they do it without shrieking in pain? Vincent Alladale, Aberdeen

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

Readers reply

Drinking very hot tea requires a technique in three stages. First comes a “schluuurrrp”, followed by a short inhalation through nearly closed teeth, “tssssssssp”, and lastly an “aaaaaaah, that’s better”. Most satisfying, but I didn’t half used to get told off by my mum for doing it in public. bricklayersoption

I never realised I drank very hot tea until I shared a flask of tea with my then 15-year-old son. He was amazed at my superpower and asked how I was managing to drink scalding-hot tea. The honest answer is that I didn’t even realise I was doing it. I can only suppose it’s an ability I’ve slowly acquired over the decades of being a tea drinker. Baz999

“Hot tea may not be suitable for some children and should only be served to them under your close supervision,” according to Rosie Lee Tetley in her excellent book on parenting, PG Tips. EddieChorepost

My late dad once owned a temperature probe and encouraged us all to measure our own “ideal sipping temperature” and “ideal gulping temperature” for tea. It’s joined the family vernacular. GK1978

My husband and I immediately heat our freshly made mugs of tea in the microwave for 20 seconds because – especially when making two mugs of tea – by the time you’ve squeezed the life out of the bag and added the milk, it’s nearly lukewarm. Tea has to be steaming. Obviously, this response will come with a health and safety warning about due diligence to one’s oesophagus, but you do have to have an asbestos mouth. My father drank his tea piping hot, so I do the same. It’s a genetic pre-disposition, perhaps. Nadia Banton

Little sips. Don’t put in extra milk to cool it. Nothing spoils good tea as much as too much milk. Walker Bay

Be a student nurse on a busy ward with a 15-second opportunity to nip into the kitchen for a brew. You soon develop an asbestos throat. Joan Friend

I can only drink tea when it’s close to boiling. Put in very little milk. When it’s coffee, I always ask cafe staff to burn the milk. It’s then closer to boiling than tea. I have an asbestos mouth. If I put my finger in the tea or coffee I drink, it burns. Go figure! MM

If tea isn’t very hot, it’s neither good nor worth drinking. Any tea that’s not hot enough is not a good cup of tea. When I was 18, I was working for a man who suggested we have a “dish” of tea everyday, which I had to make. After a while, he said to me that the water wasn’t hot enough, saying that it has to be a rolling boil before pouring it. I’ll never forget that – he was absolutely correct. Carol Carr

I was interested that the questioner lives in Scotland. Fifty years ago, when I was a medical student at St Andrews university, our professor of anatomy commented on the habit of Scottish women to drink their tea very hot and suggested that this might be a cause of the high incidence of oesophageal cancer in this group. In 2018, the British Medical Journal reported a study from China of more than 450,000 people showing an association between drinking hot tea and incidence of oesophageal cancer among smokers or drinkers. How and why people do it, I don’t know – but perhaps they shouldn’t! Gerald Coope