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I have to say, Qianjie is also a full "cup control"! Friends who come to the store can see all kinds of bone porcelain coffee cups on the shelves of the shops in front of the street, yes! They are all cups bought by beauty in front of the street and are used for hot hand-brewed coffee.

Until one day, a guest friend raised such a question, he asked why Qianjie did not use a special tasting cup, tasting cup can better show the flavor of coffee? Is the tasting Cup an IQ tax?

There may be many friends who don't know what the tasting cup is. Let's give a brief introduction to Qianjie. Coffee tasting cup is a special cup for coffee which has sprung up in recent years. Its materials and cup shape are specially designed for better taste of coffee.

Although it has only begun to rise in recent years, it is only in the field of coffee. In the 20th century, tasting cups have appeared in the wine field, and in order to show the characteristics of different wines, tasting glasses will be changed according to different types of wine and different brewing materials.

Is the tasting cup an IQ tax? So back to the question, is the tasting Cup really an IQ tax? Apart from the price, it is really not, because this kind of cup can really play the role of auxiliary taste! As early as before 2020, many papers on tasting cups clearly pointed out that cups do have a certain impact on our taste. The feeling of drinking coffee from different cups is completely different, not just tasting cups, all cups are the same. The main source of influence is the cup-shaped design of the cup and the material it uses.

But what we need to know is that the change brought by the cup is not the coffee itself, but the direction of our taste. For example: what we have in front of us is a cup of shallow roasted coffee, so the feeling we drink from cup A may be a cup of coffee with a sour taste, supplemented by sweetness and a mellow feeling; while the feeling from cup B may be a cup of coffee with sweet taste, sour taste and lighter taste. There are two reasons why the cup will change our feelings, one is the material, the other is the shape. They will have a certain physical and psychological impact on us when tasting coffee.

How does the cup affect the senses? The main psychological factors are the material, weight, thickness and color of the cup. First, let's talk about the material of the cup! At present, the common materials for coffee cups in the market are: plastic, ceramic, glass, metal and so on. Cups of different materials will have a completely different touch, some materials are silky and delicate, while others are rough.

And these tactile differences will give us a psychological effect called "sensory transfer". According to relevant research, a small part of our thoughts or feelings about one object will be transferred to another. For example, when the touch of the cup is silky, we have the psychological idea that the coffee will be silky, and when the touch of the cup is rougher, we will have the same rough taste of coffee. Because our focus on coffee will change with the change of the material of the cup. Maybe many friends disagree and think that there is not much difference between materials. But in fact, we can imagine an extreme example, a glass for dinner and a paper cup for takeout!

Divide the same cup of coffee into two portions and pour into a glass and a paper cup. Although it is the same taste, but because of the difference of the cup, we will have the idea that the paper cup coffee is not as good as the glass cup coffee. This is the impact of materials! This is why many diners will not accept the use of takeaway paper cups for production. In addition to the material, the weight of the cup will also provide us with a similar psychology. When the weight of the cup is heavier, our subconscious will think that this cup of coffee will be of higher quality. Although it doesn't change our taste, we automatically associate heavy cups of coffee with high quality because container-heavy items are linked to high quality. The thickness of the cup wall is the same. When the cup wall is thicker, we will subconsciously think that the taste of this cup of coffee is more mellow, while if the thickness of the cup is thinner, we will think that the taste of this cup of coffee tends to be light. The same is true of color, the visual effects provided by the color of the cup and the coffee liquid will also have the ability to change the mind, and the front street will not repeat it too much.

The shape and caliber design of the cup will focus on the shape and caliber design of the cup in the front street, because they have a great impact on our flavor perception. Coffee flavor is mainly perceived by smell and taste buds, while the caliber and shape of the cup will change the distribution of coffee liquid, the amount of aroma emitted, and the coffee liquid we come into contact with. So some cups can give us a better sense of aroma or flavor.

There are mainly three kinds of openings in common tasting cups: open, closed and straight! As mentioned above, not all of them are designed to enhance flavor perception. For example, the straight cup.

Straight cup, as the name implies, the structure of this kind of cup is that the whole body is vertical, with a straight wall from the belly to the edge of the mouth. Although this kind of cup gives us a weaker sense of aroma than the other two types of cups, it is vertically designed to allow more concentrated flow of liquid into the mouth, bringing greater impact to the senses of the mouth.

To put it simply, it can pour out more coffee liquid at the same tilt angle, and the coffee in the mouth will give us a fuller flavor, fuller taste and solid experience because of the more coffee in the mouth. This kind of cup is very suitable for tasting balanced coffee!

The open cup is also known as the flaring cup, which gets its name because of its large caliber. The mouth of the cup is tilted outward about 45 degrees, like a bamboo hat. Generally speaking, flared tasting cups are paired with a protruding belly cup body, because this allows the coffee to have more surface area in contact with the air, thus emitting more aroma.

The shape of the expansion will increase the flow path of the coffee liquid, making the coffee liquid more dispersed after it flows into the mouth. Because the coffee liquid is not as concentrated as a straight cup, coffee without too much impact flows through the side and tip of the tongue and then spreads quickly to all directions. Such a flow trend will allow the taste buds to capture the sweet and sour taste of coffee more directly (see figure below). And because the liquid is diffused, the concentration will be dispersed and the acid will be brighter.

At the same time, because of the large opening, our noses can be in the cup at the same time when we drink coffee. This allows us to smell more aromas when drinking, making it easier to relate to the hard-to-capture flavor of coffee. This kind of cup will be more suitable for tasting shallow roasted coffee with bright acidity.

The closing cup ends with the closing cup! The closing cup, also known as the Rohan Cup, is an inner concave cup mouth. Usually, the body of this kind of cup will bulge outward, only the bottom and the mouth of the cup are in a state of collapse.

Just like the open cup, the wide design of the cup will maximize the aroma of the coffee. The difference is that, because the mouth of the cup is very narrow, so the aroma will be gathered in the upper layer, which is very conducive to the smell. And because of the narrow mouth, we need to raise the cup more when drinking coffee, and we also need to raise the chin so that the mouth shape is similar to sipping and concentrating forward. And its effect is naturally the same as sipping, allowing the liquid to be evenly distributed in the mouth in an instant, giving a better feeling of the flavor of the coffee itself. This kind of cup will be more suitable for coffee types with more prominent flavor, such as anaerobic coffee!

So we can know that the tasting cup is not an IQ tax, because it can really improve our coffee taste. But the key is that the price can not be thrown away, so this can be said to be its biggest disadvantage: it is not close enough to the people.

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