What type of cup is best for drinking coffee? What is the chromatic-gustatory synesthesia effect? Are coffee tasting cups a ripoff?

A Curious Request About Coffee Cup Colors

Today, FrontStreet Coffee was brewing pour-over coffee as usual for customers. However, unexpectedly, the customer who placed the order made a strange request. What was it? He wanted the brewed coffee to be served in two cups of different colors.

After some inquiry, it turned out that he had read online that using cups of different colors would make coffee exhibit different flavor profiles. For example, one color might make the coffee taste sweeter, while another color might make it taste more acidic. So he wanted to try it and see if it truly had such magical effects.

FrontStreet Coffee is always happy to help, so of course this request was accommodated. As you might expect, the customer couldn't taste any difference between the two cups of different colors. This makes perfect sense—how could the color of a cup possibly change the taste of coffee? Right? But! We need to understand that while cup color doesn't directly change coffee's flavor, it can indirectly influence our "perception" of coffee's taste through other subtle means.

How Color Affects Coffee Flavor Perception

I wonder if everyone remembers the article FrontStreet Coffee shared last year titled "Are Tasting Cups a Gimmick?" In that article, FrontStreet Coffee mentioned that cup material and rim thickness can create different tasting experiences. For example, smooth materials can make coffee feel more velvety, while thicker rims can make coffee feel more robust.

That's right—it's about sensation. These factors don't actually change the texture of the coffee but influence perception through the cross-modal mechanism between touch and taste. Simply put, it can be understood as: psychological suggestion. Similarly, color's influence on coffee flavor works through the same principle—the cross-modal mechanism between vision and taste. Specifically, this means that some people, when perceiving or imagining certain colors, involuntarily experience corresponding taste sensations. For instance, seeing red might evoke sweetness, while green might evoke sourness...

The influence of cup color on coffee flavor follows the same logic! By seeing the cup's color, some people imagine that the coffee inside possesses certain specific flavors (sour, sweet, bitter...), which then triggers taste sensations that amplify these perceptions. For example, seeing red might make us think the coffee in the cup is sweeter, and when drinking, our taste buds focus on capturing the sweetness in the coffee and amplify it further. Or seeing green might make us think the coffee has prominent acidity, and when we take a sip, we intentionally focus on perceiving the coffee's acidity and amplify it...

The reason FrontStreet Coffee specifically mentions "some people" is that the corresponding relationship between color and taste isn't the same for everyone, and not everyone is influenced by color! For example, some people associate yellow with sourness, while others only associate green with sourness. This phenomenon partly stems from personal experiences—different people form different associations with colors based on their unique experiences. For instance, if the first high-acidity fruit you experienced was a yellow lemon, you'd associate yellow with sourness. But if your experience with high acidity came from unripe green fruits, you'd associate green with sourness.

The Science Behind Color-Influenced Tasting Cups

Some equipment manufacturers on the market utilize this principle to create tasting cups that use color to guide taste perception, such as cyan-green "small sour cups" or pink "small sweet cups"... But it's important to know that these effects are purely produced through visual psychology, and not everyone will be influenced by color—such as friends who haven't experienced sour fruits or those less sensitive to colors. Additionally, since color-taste synesthesia is a form of psychological suggestion, when the suggestion becomes explicit rather than implicit, some friends may develop resistance that nullifies the effect. At this point, another design feature of tasting cups plays a crucial role! What design is that? The shape of the cup rim!

As we all know, taste is primarily perceived by taste bud receptors distributed on the tongue. Different areas of the tongue have varying intensities of taste perception—for example, the tip of the tongue perceives sweetness more strongly, the sides perceive sourness more intensely, and the back of the tongue is most sensitive to bitterness. By changing the shape of the cup rim, we can determine which part of the tongue the liquid first contacts, thereby influencing our initial perception of the coffee's flavor. Once we understand the relationship between color and taste, and the effect of rim shape on liquid flow, we only need to combine these elements to create a coffee tasting cup that can "amplify sweetness" or "amplify acidity." For example, the cyan-green mentioned earlier by FrontStreet Coffee was the color most people associated with sourness in a test. So if we apply cyan-green to an open-rimmed cup that directs liquid to the tip and sides of the tongue, we can enhance the perception of sweet and sour flavors while letting the cyan-green psychologically suggest sourness, thereby "amplifying sourness" to the greatest extent.

Conclusion

This explains why the customer mentioned at the beginning of the article couldn't experience different coffee profiles in the two different-colored cups. This was both because the two cups provided by FrontStreet Coffee had identical rim designs, and because he was already aware of the psychological effects of color, which naturally prevented the "flavor influence" effect from working.

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