I don’t know if it’s because it’s cold outside and we’re enjoying our warm drinks more, but it seems a lot of conversations center on coffee cups lately. Last week I shared thoughts about the growing popularity of the “Big Hug Mug” and this morning as I was getting ready for work, the Today Show folks were talking about a study done in Australia on the effect of the color of a coffee mug on the taste of the coffee.
I had to sit down with a cup of coffee—in my Big Hug Mug—and go to the Internet to learn more. The study results had been announced in Flavour magazine. Yes, Flavour, apparently Australians include an extra “u” in words such as favourite, neighbour and colour, as our Canadian neighbors do.
According to Flavour, the researcher decided to conduct the study after hearing from a barista that customers complain more about their coffee being bitter when drinking from a white mug than a clear one.
Although the article refers to the “scientific research” done to test the barista’s “hypothesis,” it doesn’t share the details of just how the study was conducted. I don’t know if it was a group of friends sitting around a kitchen table sampling their favorite brew or if it was in a carefully structured lab environment. But regardless of how the study was done the results are interesting.
Apparently the contrast of the white cup and the black coffee increased the intensity of taste, thereby making the coffee seem bitter. The opposite occurred with a clear mug—volunteers found coffee in clear mugs to be less bitter and therefore more enjoyable.
The Flavour article goes on to share information on blue mugs, which apparently enhance everything— both sweetness and bitterness. That’s good to know, I have a few blue mugs in my eclectic collection.
However Flavour does not report how other colors fared in the study. What about green mugs like my WTIP radio mug? Fiery red, orange and black like my Joan Farnam rattle mug? Black mugs like my sturdy Cook County RidgeRiders mug?
Flavour concludes by saying, “These results add to a large and growing body of research highlighting the influence of productextrinsic colour on the multisensory perception of food and drink.”
I don’t know where to find this “large and growing body of research” but it seems to just be commonsense. I don’t think we need a study to know that food tastes better when nicely presented on a pretty plate. Wine flavor is enhanced in an elegant glass and beer is better in a solid stein. It just makes sense that coffee tastes better from an eye-pleasing mug.
Especially when the mug has sentimental value—like my Big Hug Mug.
I judge a restaurant by the
bread and the coffee.
Burt Lancaster
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