Which part of the process of making and drinking coffee do you enjoy most? How do you rate the importance of smell, taste, touch (even hearing and sight) to the enjoyment of the process of brewing your cup?
It appears that your answer to this question may well be affected by your motivation for drinking your coffee in the first place. Last year, a group of researchers from Switzerland published a study that investigated whether the reason that you drank coffee (i.e. either for sensory enjoyment or just for the caffeine kick) influenced your enjoyment of the experience of making and drinking the coffee.
The researchers looked at how the participants in the study rated their own levels of enjoyment and satisfaction as they progressed through four stages of making coffee.
- Water heating
- Jar handling*
- Cup preparation
- Cup drinking
The 60 participants were divided into two groups of 30, those who drank coffee for enjoyment (the hedonists), and those who drank for stimulation (the utilitarians). After checking that both groups of participants rated their levels of pleasure and satisfaction similarly before the experiment started (they did), the participants were repeatedly interrupted while they made their coffee and asked to rate their levels of enjoyment and the importance that they attached to different sensory experiences (smell, sight, touch etc).
After stage 4, when both groups had finally managed to drink their coffees, both groups reported similar levels of enjoyment, satisfaction etc. The difference came in the process. Overall, the group that were drinking the coffee purely for stimulation found the experience of making coffee less pleasant than the group who drank coffee because they enjoyed it. Meaning, those that drank coffee because they liked the taste seemed to enjoy the entire process of making and then drinking the coffee more than those who were just looking for a pick-me-up. Moreover, the ‘hedonists’ also attached more importance to the satisfaction of the smell and the taste of the coffee than did the ‘utilitarians’. Interestingly though, vision played an important role throughout the whole process for both groups of participants.
So how much we enjoy the process of making coffee depends on why we are drinking coffee in the first place. What about you? How do you rate the time that you spend brewing your coffee (I think that we can extrapolate this to tea too)? Are you a hedonist, a utilitarian or somewhere in between and does it matter? Please share your thoughts either here, on FB, or on Twitter.
*The study was performed at the Nestlé Research Centre so presumably used instant, hence the ‘jar’. Does this affect the conclusions of the study for ‘speciality’ coffee drinkers? Are you a utilitarian speciality coffee drinker who nonetheless enjoys the entire process? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.