No, this is not a post on how to make perfect coffee. I have my hands full with a Perfect Martini. But I wanted to elaborate on something about which I’ve been preaching. And that is properly chilling the martini stem. And to illustrate that I’m going to use hot coffee.
Have you noticed that when you pour your freshly brewed coffee into your mug in the morning that its not as hot as it was in the pot? Its because the room temperature mug cools the coffee slightly. Just as a room temperature Martini stem immediately warms the colder just shaken Martini.
Now you won’t notice this affect at Starbucks (OK, or Peets, or Dunkin Donuts, or Coffee Bean, etc.) because they put their hot coffee in a paper cup. A paper cup which has a very low thermal mass, so it doesn’t affect the coffee temperature much.
Try this at home. Brew your coffee and simultaneously pour equal amounts of coffee into both a ceramic mug and a paper cup. Or plastic ‘solo’ cup. Then immediately taste the two side by side. Which one is hotter?
So how to solve this problem? Well when I turn my brewer on I also take my mug, fill it with water and pop it into the microwave for 3 minutes. While the coffee brews the microwave heats the water in my mug which heats the mug. When the coffee is brewed I dump the water from the mug and put the hot coffee into the hot mug…. problem solved.