In Australia, around a billion cups of coffee a year are consumed in cafés, restaurants and other outlets. Even Britain, a nation famous for its fondness for tea, has in recent years seen a dramatic rise in its coffee consumption, with an estimated 70 million cups drunk each day.
Given the economic incentive to keep consumers drinking coffee, café owners, restaurateurs, crockery designers and manufacturers will, presumably, be interested in anything that can help to enhance the multisensory coffee-drinking experience for their clientele.
And, in research published last week in the journal Flavour by my colleagues and I, it appears that cup colour plays a big part in the way coffee drinkers perceive the taste of their morning cuppa.
One Day, at My Local Cafe…
The idea behind this study came about serendipitously. A barista once told me that when coffee is consumed from a white, ceramic mug, it tastes more bitter than when drunk from a clear, glass mug. Note that these two mug types are among the most commonly used vessels to serve coffee in Australian cafés and restaurants.
