Science Finds the Most Acceptable Coffee Drinking Temperature
A recent study from the UC Davis Coffee Center asks the question: “How hot do you want your coffee to be?” Most people like and expect their coffee to be hot, but getting the temperature right is an important consideration for cafés to maximize satisfaction.
In a new paper, “Impact of beverage temperature on consumer preferences for black coffee,” the team tried to find out what temperature was “just about right” and was considered neither too hot or too cold by most consumers. To do this, they asked 118 participants to each taste 27 different coffee samples and rate how much they enjoyed the temperature, ranging from “much too hot” to “much too cold.”
The team — Coffee Center director and Chemical Engineering Professor Bill Ristenpart, Food Science and Technology Ph.D. student Andrew Cotter and Food Science Professor and Coffee Center co-director Jean-Xavier Guinard — published their results in Nature on November 30 and were highlighted by coffee publication Sprudge soon afterwards.
The study is a follow-up to the group’s 2020 paper, “Consumer preferences for black coffee are spread over a wide range of brew strengths and extraction yields” where they looked at how different aspects of brewing affected how much consumers enjoyed coffee.
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Sprudge is a coffee publication and global hub for coffee culture and journalism, founded in 2009. They interview the world’s leading restaurateurs, chefs, baristas, bartenders, entrepreneurs, small business owners, artists, ceramicists, and cafe creators.
