Why Warm Coffee Taste So Bad?

Many coffee drinkers consider steaming hot coffee is a delicious liquid. They also assess refreshing iced coffee. Surprisingly, coffee outside temperature extremes that just is not good for them.

Biologists have only recently started getting a handle on how and why temperature affects taste. (Picture from: http://www.mnn.com/)

Why is coffee with room temperature or warm it feels so bad? A number of biologists believe the answer lies in the influence of temperature on the taste of food and beverages.

One considers the theory of hot coffee is not delicous because the cavemen did not have a refrigerator. What is the relationship between coffee and the cave man? According to Karel Talavera of the Laboratory of Ion Channel Research in Cuba, biological processes, such as our sensory systems, tend to be designed by evolution to work most effectively at temperatures generally we felt.

Talavera learned that the taste receptors in taste buds in our tongue respond to molecules at various temperatures. He found that certain taste receptor molecules is very sensitive to foods that are 20-35 degrees Celsius temperature, the molecules at room temperature or slightly above it. Taste receptor molecule does not record that is too hot or colder than the temperature range, so we do not feel it.

"There is still a phenomenon that we can not explain, but it agrees with the fact that the perception of decreased ability to think above a certain temperature," said Talavera.

Based on that theory, the hot coffee with temperatures around 76 degrees Celsius may not be too bitter than the coffee on room temperature (23 degrees Celsius) because of our bitter taste receptors less sensitive to bitter molecules when the molecules of coffee was hot.

"Our ancestors did not consume food at the temperature extremes," he said. Their diet generally consists of fresh berries and prey meat is 20-37 degrees Celsius temperature. Because of hot coffee or iced coffee is beyond the maximum limit of sense of taste, taste bud on our tongue does not actually feel the bitterness of coffee. *** [LIVESCIENCE | KORAN TEMPO 3835]

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