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I own seventeen coffee mugs. I have counted. Most live on a single shelf above the espresso machine, and the rest rotate through the dishwasher and the front of the cabinet where I keep the ones I actually use. Last year I did something embarrassing: I poured the same brewed coffee, from the same Chemex, into eight different vessels and tasted them in a blind side-by-side with my wife. The differences were not subtle, and I lost three rounds in a row to a woman who claims she can’t tell a cortado from a cappuccino.
The cup absolutely affects the taste. Not by changing the chemistry of the coffee. By changing the temperature, the rim contact, the aroma escape, and the small mental signals that flavor perception is built out of. Here is what I’ve actually learned from a decade of paying attention to which mugs make my coffee better and which ones quietly ruin it.
Porcelain is the right answer for most coffee, most of the time
Specialty cafes serve coffee in porcelain for a reason. It’s non-porous, holds heat well without searing your hand, has a thin lip that doesn’t get in the way of the rim flavor, and adds nothing of its own. A glazed porcelain cup is the closest thing to a flavor-neutral container that exists in the consumer-grade kitchen.
My most-used cup is a Notneutral LINO 6 oz cappuccino bowl. It cost me $18. It has lived through approximately 2,000 cycles of espresso, milk, and dishwasher. It is functionally indistinguishable from the day I bought it. If you want one cup that will work for everything from a flat white to a 6 oz pour-over, this style is hard to beat.
For drip and pour-over at full size, I like a thicker-walled porcelain mug like the East Fork “everyday” or the cheaper Crate & Barrel “Hue” series. The thicker walls trade off slightly slower preheating for substantially better heat retention. If you’re drinking from a desk over thirty minutes, that matters.
Ceramic and stoneware are mostly fine
The line between porcelain, stoneware, and “ceramic” is fuzzy in retail labeling. The functional question is whether the cup is glazed and non-porous, not what the marketing says. A glazed stoneware mug performs nearly identically to porcelain for coffee purposes, with a slightly heavier feel and a softer-looking finish.
Unglazed or roughly-glazed mugs are a different story. Pottery-fair mugs and certain handmade pieces can have minor porosity where the rim or the inside surface picks up coffee oils over time. You will know because they start to smell of coffee even when empty, and the residue does affect taste. They’re still drinkable; they’re just not what I’d reach for if I’m tasting a coffee critically.
Plastic, paper, Styrofoam: the cup that quietly hates your coffee
I drink airport coffee out of paper cups like the rest of the world and don’t make a fuss about it. But let’s be honest: a paper cup with a plastic lid muffles the aroma, picks up the flavor of the wax or polyethylene coating, and loses heat so fast you’re drinking lukewarm coffee within ten minutes. The lid is the bigger problem than the cup. The little sip hole channels the coffee away from your nose and the wide rim signal you get from a real mug.
Plastic mugs are the worst offender. They scratch, the scratches harbor oils and bacteria, and any plastic released into hot liquid (we’re talking trace amounts, but still) lives in your coffee. Styrofoam adds a polystyrene taste that I can identify blind in about three seconds. If you’ve been drinking gas-station coffee from a Styrofoam cup for twenty years and wondering why nothing tastes right when you try a “good” coffee, the cup might be most of the answer.
Glass is acceptable for iced coffee, decent for hot if it’s a borosilicate double-wall like a Bodum Pavina, and bad if it’s thin and uninsulated (you burn your hand and the coffee cools in five minutes).
Travel mugs: stainless steel done right
I travel for work a fair amount and I’ve owned more travel mugs than is reasonable. The two I still actually use, after retiring everything else, are a 12 oz (350 ml) Klean Kanteen TKWide and a 14 oz Yeti Rambler. Both are double-wall vacuum-insulated 18/8 stainless steel. Both keep coffee genuinely hot for four to six hours. Both have caused exactly zero off-flavors in coffee, once seasoned in.
That “seasoned in” part is the catch. A new stainless steel mug straight out of the box can taste metallic for the first few brews. The fix is simple: brew a cup of coffee, let it sit overnight in the mug, dump it out, and rinse. Three cycles of this and the metallic note is gone permanently. After that, the cup contributes nothing to the flavor.
The thing nobody tells you about travel mugs is that the lid matters more than the body. Flip-top lids that splash directly onto your palate, the way you’d drink from a normal mug, give you a better coffee experience than tiny sip-hole lids that channel the coffee away from your nose. The Yeti MagDock lid is my favorite of the current crop. The standard Klean Kanteen Cafe Cap is also good.
Wash it. Actually wash it.
The single biggest mug-related flavor issue I see in friends’ kitchens isn’t the material. It’s the brown ring. Coffee oils are sticky. They adhere to the inside of any cup, and over weeks of “rinsed but not really washed” use, they build up into a layer that contributes a stale, bitter, slightly rancid edge to every subsequent cup.
Hot water and dish soap once a day handles 90 percent of this. For the ring that has already set in, a paste of baking soda and a tiny bit of water, scrubbed with a soft sponge, removes it without scratching the glaze. For really stubborn stains on white porcelain, a 1:4 mix of white vinegar and warm water sat in the cup for an hour, then washed, will reset it.
Don’t use bleach. Don’t use anything abrasive on glazed surfaces. And don’t put the cup back in the cabinet until it’s actually dry. A cup with a damp interior closed in a dark cabinet will pick up a mild musty note that is hard to wash out later.
Shape matters more than most people realize
The single most overlooked variable is the shape of the rim. A wide-mouth cup (a cappuccino bowl, a teacup) lets you smell the coffee while drinking it, and a huge fraction of what you experience as flavor is actually aroma. A narrow-mouth cup (a traditional tall coffee mug) gives you less aroma per sip. The same coffee in two different cups tastes meaningfully different even though the actual liquid is identical.
The thickness of the rim matters too. Thin rims (1-2 mm) let the coffee hit your palate cleanly. Thick rims (4-5 mm) make the coffee feel heavier and the lip of the cup more present in the sip. Cafe pros generally prefer thin rims for tasting. Some people prefer thicker rims for casual drinking because the cup feels more substantial.
If you’re going to own one upgraded coffee cup, get a 6-8 oz thin-rimmed porcelain with a slight inward curve at the top. That shape concentrates aroma toward your nose while you sip. It is the most consistent format I’ve found for actually noticing what’s in the cup.
The bottom line
Get a porcelain or glazed stoneware mug. Wash it daily. Keep a stainless steel travel mug for the road and season it in. Skip the plastic, the Styrofoam, and the paper unless you have no choice. Pay attention to the shape of the rim, because a well-shaped cup of decent coffee will beat poorly-shaped cup of great coffee in a blind taste test more often than you’d think.
And if you ever want to humble yourself, run the same coffee through eight different cups blind. It’s an exercise in finding out how much of what you thought you knew about your favorite coffee is actually about the vessel.
Discussion 46
My grudge against stainless steel containers came, I think, from my s.s. thermos, where, after a few hours, the coffee would taste burnt, bitter and barely coffee-like at all. I was just reading the Corelle website and it’s glass of some sort, which would be the least chemically active of any container–like lab glassware.
I have not seen glass-lined thermos liners in stainless steel mugs. Starbucks for a while had ceramic mugs with steel cladding outside, which worked very well for both taste and heat retention, but I guess it’s hard work to make all that stick together. I have to repeat my confession up above that now I can take an hour drinking my coffee, with cream, out of my s.s. mug and not notice any deterioration in taste.
I find my Corelle cups have a strange aroma. I don’t know if this makes sense but I find them to smell chalky and dry. I wish I could come up with better terms because chalky and dry aren’t really aromatic qualities. Christopher- I agree about scum buildup. Doesn’t your stainless mug use a glass vacuum bottle inside (w reflective coating on outside later of glass) so coffee only touches glass?
And I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the bad flavor from the vacuum bottle results from coffee scum building up in there. It’s hard to wash a “thermos” bottle. If the vessel smells like coffee, it’s not clean. But I’m generally sure that steel reacts with coffee more than ceramic–but “generally” doesn’t get you to Cleveland.
I started this line with my denunciation of stainless steel cups in 2008. I reread the article and it said the steel apparently doesn’t react with the coffee. I have to agree. No substitute for experience. My stainless steel mug, which I’ve had for years, and which I changed back to after years of ceramic mugs, keeps coffee hotter longer and it doens’t seem to affect the taste. I formed my opinion from my stainless steel vacuum bottle. Seven hours in there leads to serious flavor deterioration. But an hour or so doesn’t. So I apologize for arguing beyond my facts.
Any second-hand shop will be full of mugs. I’ve been using a 10-ounce cobalt glass mug for as long as I can remember. I reckon I’ll keep using it until I’m called home.
Hey I’m brand new to this site – just curious what kinds of coffees others have found that you really enjoy. I’m a big fan of Peet’s and use their home delivery service now. What has anyone else here discovered worth checking out?
Christopher –
Thanks for the tip – local Starbucks didn’t have the tumbler so I ordered on line, looking forward to having hot, pure tasting coffee.
Hey I’m brand new to this site – just curious what kinds of coffees others have found that you really enjoy. I’m a big fan of Peet’s and use their home delivery service now. What has anyone else here discovered worth checking out?
High Wave makes all-ceramic travel mugs, over the internet. Starbucks has one now in shops, double-wall, 12 oz.
YES to Cal Watkins comments – thank you for the validation. I want a mug that will keep my coffee hot, but I don’t like my current stainless steel mug, because I can taste the metal. Does anyone know where I can actually buy a glass or ceramic lined travel mug, so I can enjoy hot coffee without affecting the taste.
Chinese stainless is notoriously poor quality. The case of my Gaggia Classic under the drip tray rusted out completely. It was alloyed without enough chromium to prevent rusting. Would it be far fetched to factor this in when evaluating stainless thermos bottles and cups? (My large HydroFlask was returned once for rusting. Their (free) replacement is also rusting.)
Ceramic is better because it does not react chemically with the coffee. The main idea, then, is that coffee is a chemical. I read the Aeropress instructions, and the two points there are the ten seconds of stirring, and the lower temperature (175 degrees, for less “acidity and bitterness”). One point against is the doubling of the normal amount of dry coffee used (four tablespoons for 10 ozs. instead of two; two scoops instead of one), but that is also applicable to Dunkin Donuts and perhaps for many coffee lovers. I.e., one way to make a cup of coffee have more coffee flavor is to use more coffee.
Thanks. Stir for ten seconds, which opens to the general point of longer dwell time of contact between grounds and hot water. Slightly cooler water.
Best cup of coffee bar none is from a little device called the Aeropress. It brews one expresso cup around 5oz at a time. and is alot better than the french press. Drink it from ceramic cups. Use bottled water and decent coffee. 25 dollars you will never go back to drip coffee. Thanks
A stoneware pottery mug. Definitely. Coffee is a personal experience if you use a quality handmade mug every morning.
Or what I wish would happen! I actually found a “double walled” ceramic cup shaped like a “to-go” cup – great idea – but – it had a lid made of a flexible silicone material – I could smell the silicone as I was drinking the coffee! Yuck. Also glass walled thermos coffee – I can taste some bitter taste also – maybe its the plastic lids used to seal the thermos….ahh tribulations of a coffee person… – I have used a bit of salt on the grounds before brewing also – I find it tends to smooth out the coffee..Usually only do this when making large urns of coffee for groups…
I may have said it above, but “eccentric” provoked me: I think many coffee-drinkers don’t know/like the taste of coffee. Like beer drinkers who don’t like the taste of beer.
If you’re paying attention, you’re by definition not eccentric. You’re centered on what’s happening.
As some of the previous commenters eluded to – a stainless steel type cup and/or pot definitely for some reason puts a metallic taste or effect to the coffee. Unfortunately Stainless steel vessels are the rage although some places are selling Ceramic mugs and travel mugs which is a great option – Unfortunately – again they miss the point by including them with plastic or silicone lids which add an unfortunate taste to a good coffee. I am surprised that more “experts” don’t notice this – especially the high end coffee experts…
I say only glass or ceramic should touch coffee at all….including the lids and pots and muggs…but I guess I am an eccentric minority….
the best cup of coffee when you open up the screwtop lid . out of a thermos vacuum sealed for several hours in the glass insulated chamber.but it has to be unwashed out and after several brewings dont wash it.just pour out whats left and put the lid back on. then the next day brew your coffee in it let it set for 2-3 hours. then you’l have the best cup.
That case might involve “hunger is the best cook”, where your taste buds were on double-overtime.
Another case, more likely, of the observer’s condition altering the observation has to do with putting salt in the coffee pot. My Swedish relatives in Nebraska did this. “Just tradition”? Lately I wonder if my running out of salt in my body (serious bicyclists get this, I got it from jogging in Iraq in 100 degree weather, it’s why they make Gatorade: electrlyte drinks) makes coffee taste bitter? Some days my coffee tastes bitter and other days it tastes great, when the process seemed identical. Why would salt (a basic flavor) affect bitterness (likewise)? No idea. Just suggesting a test: next time the coffee tastes bitter for no reason (no six hours in a steel thermos, e.g.), add a dash of salt and see what happens.
I just got back from a camping trip. I use an insulated french press. I made a cup for my daughter in a paper cup. It was one of the best cups of coffee I’ve had in a long time. My theory is the temp. and the seep time that causes the bitterness. I have made cups of coffee like this one before at home, but I cant replicate it on purpose.
Just be careful where your coffee mugs are made; referring to coffee mugs where a glaze has been used. Several countries around the the world do not practice the same safety standards as North America when it comes to lead safe glazes which are common place here.
Hence, the saying, “Wake up and smell the coffee.”
Thanks for sharing this interesting information. While some people can tell the difference between different mugs, I believe many people don ‘t notice it at all.
…not only the cup changes the taste but (and my wife says I’m nuts) I hate to have a metal spoon placed in my cup – I can tell.
Bought a coffee pot 2yrs ago that grinds the beans & then brews the coffee from the grounds all in the same pot. Tried several brands of coffee bean even ground coffee. It has a distinct oily & bitter taste. Every pot, every time no matter what I changed including the mug I drank it from. Used tap water, bottled water, pitcher filtered water, cleaned it out 5 times with vinegar…nothing changed. I hate to buy another coffee pot then get the same results. I have used this coffee pot about 10 times & it has sat for a year 1/2. Would it still be ok to use if cleaned well?
Disgusting chemical taste. Changed coffee (several brands) and still get chemical taste. Not everytime with every pot, one ever 6 to 10 pots or so…can’t figure it out. I have a Mr. Coffee purchased about 1 yr ago…made by sunbeam in China model FTX 41
Check what country your coffee pot was made…..Who knows what was used in the manufacturing of it? Its not the coffee its the pot.
I bought a new pot, disgusting chemical taste, changed coffee brands three times, still same disgusting taste and SMELL. I took pot back, bought another (different brand), sixty uses later the new pot still has a chemical taste, although not as bad.
It’s cause for concern, obviously leaching out of the material the coffee maker was made of.For all we know it may be deadly.
Maybe there’s some residue from the manufacturing process.
I ran across your site when trying to solve a recent problem with my coffee. My old coffeepot wore out and I had to replace it (same brand), but now I’m throwing my second cup down the drain and barely able to drink the first. My husband agrees.
I’m using the same brand coffee and the same filter and we’ve always used a clear glass mug. My coffee with the old pot was to die for, but the new pot sucks! what could be different? They were both plastic with glass carafes, the only difference I can see is that the old one was black and the new is white.
I remember giving a new Mr. Coffee away that had an aluminum basket, and aluminum taste, but that was probably 30 years ago. Metal will change the taste of coffee.
But, coffee pots make a BIG difference in flavor too. I can’t for the life of me figure out what’s different about mine. Any help?
If you’re in a sour mood, your coffee will taste bitter and, indeed, sour. Mellowness test: if that coffee doesn’t taste good, and you did everything right in preparing it, you need to mellow down.
As the proud owner of over 300 coffee cups (under 15 are plastic or travel mugs) Ceramic works best, although I do have a heavy hand crafted stoneware mug that was made for me that I love to use!
Not only can the choice of cup or water change the flavor, but the type of spoon can be highly noticable. (Not to mention what type of container your creamer and/or sugar/sweetener is stored in)
Personally, I wash my cup out every morning, actually I rinse it in scalding water, and dry with one of my flour sack towels I was given by my Grandmother. NO soap every touches my cup, just as NO ONE is allowed to touch my cup to wash, drink out of it etc…
I collect coffee cups with logos or uniqueness to them, very few that I have consist of more that 2 alike.
Throughout my house, you will see a coffee cup on the wall, with a photo next to it, or above it.
That is the one thing I want when a loved one passes on. 23 yrs ago I got Daddy’s cup, just over a year ago, Mother’s cup. They hang together, but I have many other cups that have been brought to me willingly from the families of just friends I love. If I have a relationship with someone, there is coffee drinking between us….
The best tasting cup of coffee comes from being with someone you cherish, no matter what it is served in.
Sylvia,
I hope you’re joking about the Tasters Choice :P
Hmmm, well I swear if I don’t wash my travel mug (IDK what exactly it’s made of, but some kind of metal) after every use then the taste of old coffee gets stuck in there.
But it might be mind over matter, I mean I like to use the plastic cups you get iced coffee in from Starbucks at home for my coffee because I think it tastes best.
But it’s probably just because I like to sip from a Starbucks cup with a straw so I think it tastes better.
I tend to think all drinks taste better when in a clear cup, no matter what they’re made of.
I think my thermos is made from steel though, tastes like it.
I dunno, I swear there’s a metallic flavor in any steel container no matter how it’s been treated. Best bet is those glass or silver lined travel cups imho
OOPSIE, I goofed, I did mean Porcelain mug…sorry…….:((
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!!!..
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 !
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.
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”
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.
just porcelain! heat factor
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.
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.
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!!!
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
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.