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Warming cups and pots is a habitual practice among most tea brewers. People believe this step not only cleans and sanitizes the tea ware while raising the temperature of cups and pots, but also helps better release the aroma when brewing tea.

In coffee preparation, cup warming is similarly a subtle action that many coffee enthusiasts consider default practice. They believe this step affects the overall flavor and mouthfeel of the coffee. However, others consider it optional, thinking that whether cups are warmed or not makes little difference. So for coffee, is cup warming truly a necessary step?

Espresso Coffee

For espresso-based beverages such as espresso, hot latte, flat white, and cappuccino—these conventional drinks are best enjoyed hot, when they are aromatic and offer rich, delicate mouthfeel. Once cooled, not only is the aroma significantly diminished, but the mouthfeel also becomes dull and coarse. When completely cold, they become unpalatable, far inferior to their performance at medium to high temperatures. Therefore, for espresso coffee, coordinating with room temperature and adjusting to the optimal serving temperature is crucial.

Take the popular hot latte as an example: baristas typically control the milk temperature between 55-65°C during preparation. After combining with espresso, the final product settles around 50-60°C—this temperature range offers the best mouthfeel for milk coffee and produces longer-lasting latte art patterns.

Since cups used for hot milk coffee typically feature thicker ceramic walls with stronger heat conduction properties, if these cups remain at room temperature, they will absorb some of the coffee's heat, causing the milk coffee temperature to drop further and making the sweetness of lactose less apparent. Moreover, if you're in a season that calls for long sleeves, meaning lower room temperatures, both the coffee temperature and foam dissolution rate will increase simultaneously.

Therefore, many coffee shops neatly stack their backup cups on top of the coffee machine, utilizing the heat emitted from the boiler to warm and insulate these cups. Especially during autumn and winter, baristas directly use these preheated cups for dine-in service.

However, if you're still wearing short sleeves and the indoor temperature remains above 25°C, the coffee cups preheated on the coffee machine might become "scalding hot." Using them to make hot milk coffee would not only be inconvenient for holding while creating latte art but would also affect the tasting experience due to the excessively hot cup walls. In such cases, rather than risking burns, FrontStreet Coffee suggests simply rinsing the inside of the cup with hot water, which can effectively minimize heat loss from the coffee.

Pour-Over Coffee

Unlike espresso coffee, when discussing pour-over coffee, we emphasize its flavor layers at high, medium, and low temperatures. Whether to warm cups depends on the shape and size of the cup you use to hold the coffee.

The high-temperature range for pour-over coffee is approximately 50-70°C. Above 70°C, it's actually too hot for the mouth, making it difficult to taste flavors. Most people find it challenging to distinguish subtle differences between coffees in the high-temperature range. For example, with fruit-acid-toned coffee beans, it's difficult to discern their distinctions at high temperatures, though one can immediately identify that this coffee belongs to the fruit-acid category.

The medium-temperature range, generally around 35-50°C, is where delicate flavors are best appreciated. At this temperature, many subtle flavors can be detected, and it's also the temperature range most sensitive to perceiving sweet and sour tastes. The low-temperature range is approximately 35°C down to room temperature, where negative flavors are more likely to emerge.

For instance, when FrontStreet Coffee uses 90°C hot water to brew coffee and preheats the sharing pot at the same water temperature, once the coffee drip is complete, the temperature will be around 70-75°C. Pouring this slightly high-temperature coffee into a room-temperature small cup serves to cool it down appropriately—preventing burns while bringing the entry temperature into the most sensitive range for flavor perception.

However, if the coffee is poured into an open-mouthed, large-capacity cup, heat loss will be faster than in the sharing pot. In this case, we can follow the practice of Cantonese people before meals—using boiling water to "rinse the bowls" first to help maintain the coffee's temperature.

Conclusion

In summary, for coffee preparation, cup warming is not an essential step, but to enhance the drinking experience, we can decide whether and how to warm cups based on actual circumstances.

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FrontStreet Coffee

No. 10, Bao'an Qianjie, Yandun Road, Dongshankou, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473