Cups and travel mugs
The vessel is part of the tasting
Coffee doesn't stop at extraction. What you drink it from plays a part in what you perceive.
Research has documented it. Van Doorn, Wuillemin and Spence (2014) served the same latte in three cups (white, blue and transparent): in the white cup, the coffee was judged more intense and more bitter, and less sweet, than in the other two. Shape matters too: a cup with rounded walls increased the perceived sweetness of the coffee in the work of Carvalho and Spence (2018). Rim opening, wall thickness, material: all of these steer the aromatics before the first sip.
Temperature, for its part, governs how long you have to read the cup. Hot coffee gives up its body; as it cools, it opens onto its acidity and its fruit notes. A cup with good thermal inertia slows that run. A vacuum double-walled flask suspends it, and takes the coffee away from the counter without locking it into a reheated taste.
Choosing your cup means choosing what you want to hear from the coffee.
