Does Your Coffee Cup Affect the Taste?
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When you sit down with you favorite coffee mug, is it standing in the way of the best tasting cup? Most of us don’t think about what we’re drinking out of, but rather just the coffee itself. To help you make the most of your coffee drinking days, here are some tips to make sure each cup tastes as good as it should.
– Use a porcelain mug – These are the best of the best in terms of allowing your coffee to taste as good as it could. Because it’s not porous, it holds the warmth for longer which preserves the flavor. These mugs are also reusable so they’re environmentally friendly too. They’re easy to find in any store and can even be picked up at a thrift store for pennies.
– Avoid plastic, paper, and Styrofoam cups – Each of these cups can add the flavor of their materials to your cup of coffee, altering the taste. While you might not realize it at first, the flavor is slowly eroded by these kinds of cups. Even worse, there is some debate as to whether these cups will release some of their more toxic ingredients into your coffee because of the high temperature of the water as it sits in the cup.
– Wash your coffee mug regularly – We all know that you can get rings around your coffee cup if you don’t wash it out regularly, but this also affects the taste. The oils in the coffee can adhere to the sides of your cup and then be deposited into your next cup. Instead, be sure to scrub out your coffee mug with hot water and soap each day. If you forget and can’t seem to remove a coffee stain ring, use a little vinegar in warm water and let the cup sit for an hour or so. Rinse the cup out and then wash with warm soapy water. The ring will be gone and your flavor will be back.
– Use a stainless steel travel mug – Because stainless steel is not porous and holds heat well, these are the best mugs to use for travel. While porcelain is best, the stainless steel mugs don’t seem to remove any of the flavors of a freshly brewed cup of coffee. These do need to be rinsed before you use them to prevent any metallic taste in the first cup.
In answer to the question of whether a coffee cup can affect the taste of your coffee, only your taste buds can decide. Some people are more sensitive than others while others can’t even tell the difference. But if you’re looking for the purest flavor you can get, try some of these tips to see if you notice a difference.
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February 20th, 2008 at 1:16 am
I agree about ceramic mugs. Plastic travel mugs taint coffee badly. As for stainless, I just carried coffee for seven hours in a vacuum bottle (”thermos”) with a stainless steel liner. I’ve been considering buying a stainless steel travel mug, since I dropped my ceramic travel mug, kapow. So I monitored the taste of coffee out of my “thermos” today. The first cup tasted fine, even out of the plastic lid/cup of the “thermos”. But the last cup, just now, not only tasted “off” but it looks like old oil out of an engine, black-black, sooty-like, nasty.
I think the steel is reacting with the coffee.
June 8th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
If you find the reason that this oily film appears please let me know. I hate it in my coffee cup. WHAT IS THE CAUSE
August 7th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Well wynona, all of the great aromas and flavours that appear in your cup of coffee are a direct result of fats, oils and sugars locked inside the mysterious coffee beans we all love! So…..that oil buildup, thats coffee!!!
August 15th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
I wish I had the answer you are looking for, but I just couldn’t help reply so you know you are not the only one looking for answers. I was given a “high-quality”–I assume stainless steel travel mug and the coffee, from the first cup to the last cup months later, tastes horrible. Everybody seems to rave about stainless steel/metal travel mugs but I don’t understand why others aren’t experiencing the same problem.
August 28th, 2008 at 8:00 am
I am doing a study of the coffee mug and need to find information on the history of the the “coffee mug”. Who decided to use a mug? Has the shape changed due to cultural reasons and like information. Any info that can aid this study will be welcomed.
August 30th, 2008 at 4:43 am
just porcelain! heat factor
September 1st, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Firstly, it may be that most US coffee drinkers are not “awake to smell the coffee”–despite all the frivolity about double lattes with a shot, etc. Either they might not know what coffee itself tastes like or not like its taste. I’ll guess most beer drinkers dislike the taste of beer, likewise tequila drinkers, rye whiskey drinkers, their respective drinks.
They don’t savor it, don’t know how.
As for ceramic and heat, Ali, it may be because ceramic is a better insulator, meaning it doesn’t heat up so much in the presence of the hot liquid, whereas steel heats up enough to become a driving force for chemical changes in the coffee mixture, maybe.
October 9th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Bad chemical taste….new pot, older pot, new coffee, older coffee, bottled water, refrigerator water or water from the tap, paper filter or permanent filter. Driving us nuts….changed cups, changed EVERYTHING! WHAT CAN THE MATTER BE???
October 11th, 2008 at 5:59 pm
I got my medical degree from “House” on Fox, which is way better than Johns Hopkins, so I suggest you check if you both, or all of you, have exactly the same bad taste, and then consider if there is something wrong with your tongues.
I run out of sodium sometimes and my body tells me this by giving me a salt taste on my tongue. I can have that taste on my tongue even though the food I eat in that low-sodium (flushed out by too much sweating, water, caffeine, fatigue,??? and unreplaced due to too little sodium intake) state tastes flat, another way of my body telling me to eat salt which contradicts, seemingly, the evidence of the salt taste in my mouth.
But chemical taste is way worse than salt taste. They say in thriller novels that adrenaline has a metallic taste. Or is yours a carbon tetrachloride, dry-cleaners’ fluid, make-your-hair-fall-out, sort of taste?
Maybe there’s something in your living quarters that you only detect in drinking coffee made there. Try drinking coffee there you made somewhere else and try taking your home-brew coffee somewhere else to drink.
It is the great principle of modern faith that, if you eliminate all the impossible explanations, the remaining theory, no matter how unlikely, will explain the thing. Although, in practice, you don’t go through your set of theories one by one. You go through your sanities one by one until they all expire and you find a new one. But that’s why we drink coffee, to enjoy the journey.
October 27th, 2008 at 8:40 am
I’ve been drinking coffee since 15 or 16, and regularly since 20, at least 2 cups / mugs a day, I am 50 now. As long as I can remember, porcelain mug is the best so far. But lately, I bought a stainless mug (cup) with a cap. I can’t say it tastes “a lot better” than porcelain mug, but it’s different, and good, very good indeed. Remember cowboys used to drink from “can” or steel mug by the campfire ? It does look good !
April 10th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
[...] coffee is more enjoyable from a durable mug than from a paper one. Talk About Coffee published a thorough article a year ago, detailing how paper cups can negatively affect the taste of coffee. The basic gist is [...]
June 26th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Difinately Ceramic is the best…But not only the cup can change the taste of Tasters Choice coffee, but also the WATER you use to make the cup of coffee…Suggest you have your Water district check your sink water for additives, however its best to buy distilled clear water for coffee…Water does make all the difference in the world.
P.S. IF youv’e just brushed your teeth it will make a differece in taste also. buttttt I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE MY TASTERS CHOICE and wouldn’t drink any other!!!..
June 26th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
OOPSIE, I goofed, I did mean Porcelain mug…sorry…….:((