My friend Matt from New Zealand did his own receptacle video below (although not enough mentions of the said vessels)
Take a look at
With a follow up
Its meant I thought about it all some more and will do a post tomorrow with a mini follow up, but pleased it inspired some one some where.
Why is the man wearing a hat?
Unfortunatly it was a stinking hot bad hair day when we did this…plus he just likes hats.
Funny: after all this research, you seem to converge on the type of glasses used for “Schümli Pflümli”, a somewhat unsavoury alcoholic coffee drink served in the Swiss alps that I sampled rather often during my military service there. I found this photo of a Schümli Pflümli on the internet: http://reklame.moblog.ch/files/images/2006/12/mob88_1166122072.jpg
I never thought that the Swiss mountain people had given any thought to the shape of their glasses to concentrate the aroma of their cheap watery coffee mixed with schnapps and topped with cream, but there you have it. Never underestimate how much thought and research have gone into a seemingly unsophisticated drink…
Joke aside: while the fact that closed funnels concentrate the aromas comes as no surprise, the lesson for me is that there appears to be something about pointy bottoms that brings out the acidity and fruitiness of the coffee. Note Steve’s surprising appreciation of the champagne flute which I would have thought totally unsuitable for coffee, and the triumpth of the pointy Stella glass in Matt’s video. As far as I know, this is not common knowledge. Perhaps we should think of designing mugs with pointy bottoms? It would look something like this:
http://www-sigproc.eng.cam.ac.uk/~js851/pub/champagne_mug.gif
(pardon my poor drawing skills… perhaps someone could do a 3D rendering of this?)
One more thought (and I promise I’ll stop spamming after this 🙂 )
Good Espresso cups have pointy bottoms!!! The Italians seem to have known that coffee is enhanced by the pointy bottoms? How about designing an espresso cup with a pointy bottom and a closed funnel? I am not going to attempt another drawing as once a day is bad enough….
Happy new year.
Hi Jossy, I hadn’t noticed how much the Stella glass tapered to a point at it’s base. Thanks for pointing that out. Nice picture! I see where you are going with it, however incorparating a taper at the top should be there possibly?
Did nothing get broken? 🙂
This made me realise what a difference there was the day we drank a Chemex brew from a larger version of the Bodum shot glasses Mutty mentioned in the video instead of the usual mug. Where the mug offers a thinner clean cup, the Bodum had much more body and flavour, though retained that lovely Chemex cleanness.
Nice one guys, real food for thought. I need to go and watch The Leighton blindfolded now.