There are teapots with systems for stopping the infusion once the tea has reached the desired flavour.

I remember long and heated correspondence somewhere about the milk first controversy, which produced various reasons for each practice. There is, as there would be in England, a class thing embedded in it. Upper tends to tea first, and sneers at the other party, as being ignorant, as if drinking something the way you like drinking it was wrong. What happens is this. If you put in tea first, the milk is scalded as it is added. This changes the flavour - if you like UHT milk, you will like the scalded flavour. This may be to do with the Raj, where scalding the milk was a good hygienic idea. It also allows the guest to select the amount of milk to add, as in coffee, so avoiding discussions of the "'ow dark do you like it, ducks?" variety. Milk first raises the temperature of the milk slowly, so gives a different flavour. It also protects the cup from thermal shock as the very hot tea is poured in, but I don't know how vital this was. Although I can drink tea unmilked, I do like the way the milk rounds off the bite of the tannin. And I think that people who sneer about pouring cow juice into delicate oriental infusions (an American columnist advertising a British airline) should consider diversity a good thing, not a bad.

Penny