The coffee, not the cup that holds it, is what matters
Posted by TheShot on 14 Feb 2007 | Tagged as: Quality Issues
A local, homespun, philosophical yarn in today’s Gulf Breeze News (Gulf Breeze, FL … why do all the crackpots seem to come from Florida?) noted how our approach to life can failingly be like concentrating on the cup and not the coffee within it: The coffee, not the cup that holds it, is what matters. It’s a nice, trite, Prarie-Home-Companion-way of looking at life. The author even relates this analogy to the untimely death of Anna Nicole Smith (huh?!?). The only problem with the author’s analogy is that it’s an ignorant and delusional pack of lies.
Cups do matter when it comes to coffee. Unfortunately, most cafés have no concept of this, and most coffee drinkers are far too intent on drinking their coffee like runners at a marathon refreshment station to notice. As the Espresso Italiano Tasting manual puts it…
The design of the cup affects:
- the appearance of the coffee and thus our appreciation of its creamy head (or crema),
- our olfactive appreciation by dispersing or concentrating the aroma,
- the taste because of its contact with our lips,
- the sensation of heat, and
- the quantity of coffee allowed into the mouth.
There’s a reason quality restaurants present their food on warmed china instead of paper plates. If drinking vessels truly didn’t matter, we’d all be sipping fine wines out of disposable plastic beer cups. And if I’m shelling out $2 a cup for beans that cost less than $2 per pound as greens, you had better believe I expect to be treated as if I’m at something other than a three-year-old’s birthday party.
Maybe Chuck Randle likes to brew his morning coffee through his grandson’s old gym socks, but coffee drinking shouldn’t taste of paper. It’s enough when I have to lick envelopes. Chuck, if you’re going to pick on something as “superfluous,” why couldn’t you have instead chosen something like bloggers and columnists in Podunk local weeklies?
3 Comments »
on 15 Feb 2007 at 8:06 am -05:00T 1.bfernald said …
Sure, the cup affects the physical (heat, quantity) and emotional (how you expect to be treated) experience of coffee. But, if you take the word of MalcoIm Gladwell and his quote of Darrel Rhea of the Cheskin company in Blink, the flavors that are tasted and their intensity can be impacted by the appearance of the packaging:
“… what we found is that if you add fifteen percent more yellow to the green on the package - if you take this green and add more yellow - what people report is that the taste experience has a lot more lime or lemon flavor. …”
on 29 Mar 2007 at 2:37 pm -04:00T 2.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » Taiwan to ban paper cups in offices, schools said …
[...] Now we’ve written before about the importance of a good cup when drinking espresso. And we’ve written that there are times where what’s right for flavor and what’s right for the environment go hand-in-hand. The paper cup issue is the perfect example, and some governments are contributing to the cause: Taiwan to ban paper cups in offices, schools. [...]
on 10 Jul 2007 at 4:35 pm -04:00T 3.Espresso News and Reviews - TheShot.coffeeratings.com » A cup of coffee to go -- and hold the cup said …
[...] my hero. And I don’t care if it saves killer bees — at least give me the option to drink my espresso out of an adult cup once in a while, and I’m all for [...]