The New Rules of Coffee by Jordan Michelman & Zachary Carlsen

Author:Jordan Michelman & Zachary Carlsen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale
Published: 2018-09-24T16:00:00+00:00

RULE 26

Cute cups make coffee taste better.

The way we encounter and process flavor is subject to the influence of a thousand variables.

Have you ever wondered why a glass of wine tastes better in a fancy restaurant? Or why a cup of coffee tastes better poured into your favorite mug? The human brain is an amazing thing, and the way we encounter and process flavor is subject to the influence of a thousand variables. Writing in Scientific American, Yale School of Medicine neuroscientist Dana Small tells us that taste is “actually a fusion of a food’s taste, smell, and touch into a single sensation.” That means that no, you aren’t crazy: today’s pour-over really did taste so good in part due to what vessel you served it in.

Good cafes know this and strive to serve up their coffees in ceramics that are as lovely to hold as they are to drink from. Market Lane Coffee of Melbourne, Australia, has partnered with Roberta Gartland, a master ceramicist working in the medium of Tasmanian ice porcelain, which is soft to the touch and glazed a delicate blue green, to supply their cups. Patricia Coffee Brewers, also in Melbourne, works with ceramicist Malcolm Greenwood. The G&B Coffee/Go Get Em Tiger family of coffee brands in Los Angeles partnered with influential ceramicist Ben Medansky for their cups. Medansky is now one of the city’s most in-demand ceramicists, and his work has appeared in the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and galleries around the world.

Nice cups are the secret weapon that help good cafes serve great coffee, and you can do the same neat trick for yourself at home. Like all art, your taste in ceramics will be subjective. Maybe you want to take home the same Gartland or Medansky cups found in these high-end cafes; maybe your taste is more toward streamlined midcentury mugs, like the iconic Edith Heath coffee mug design made by Heath Ceramics of California; maybe you’re after that ineffable, hand-thrown, imperfect wabi-sabi effect found in the works of Japanese ceramicists like Masanobu Ando (Gifu Prefecture, Japan) or Nobuhito Nishigawara (Orange County, California).

Or maybe you’re a little more simple. Jordan’s favorite mug comes from the Figment ride at Walt Disney World, purchased in the gift shop at some point in the 1990s. Zachary’s favorite mug comes from Ikea. You do you, just know that this stuff helps your coffee taste better, and think of it as part of what makes drinking coffee fun.

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