Why Drinks Taste Better When Sipped Through A Straw | Hacker News Reader

Why Drinks Taste Better When Sipped Through A Straw

finecooking.com

74 pointsjamesbressi20 comments

Apparent answer: aeration (mostly).

Also, sucking a straw forces you to drink in a way that maximizes exposure to your palate, somewhat the same way "pro" wine tasters drink wine.

If you have an hour or two free, get one of those little wine aerators and do the taste test. It's a night-and-day difference.

This also appears to be one of the topics addressed in Myrhvold's epic _Modernist Cuisine_.

Perhaps this relates to the experience I've heard some relate, finding that food tastes better when camping. There's more fresh air, more air movement, and perhaps deeper breathing from moving around more.

You can taste anything in that way by bubbling it through your teeth - I do it with wine when tasting, but also sometimes with beer, cordials, etc - it enhances the flavour. No need for a straw.

Coke w/ ice tastes better w/o a straw and directly from the glass...

That's probably because the bubbles are naturally popping and putting lots of it in the air. When you drink from the cup you get more of that air, with the straw you don't.

Maybe I'm weird (and I've been accused of that before), but I can't think of a single beverage that tastes better to me through a straw.

All cold drinks taste best (to me) direct from a glass (and, I mean one made of glass). Hot coffee, tea and cocoa taste best drunk directly from a ceramic mug. I can't think of any other hot drinks I've had recently, but I suspect I'd pick the ceramic mug for them also.

Though uncouth, I've noticed that eating with your mouth open has a similar effect.

I find that all sodas from a plastic bottle are so much worse than a can, straw or not.

And that, in a nutshell, is why some things taste better through a straw.

It doesn't explain why some things don't taste better through a straw like ice tea or beer.

> It doesn't explain why some things don't taste better through a straw like ice tea or beer.

I wonder if it's partly cultural - in Guilin, China there's a place called Jack Coffee that sells coffee in a covered plastic cup that you drink through a straw. At first I was turned off by the idea, but after a few days I came to enjoy it.

I'm in Vietnam now, and my first night I met an old friend. He ordered a beer, put two ice cubes in the glass, and poured the beer over the ice. I said, "Beer on ice...?" He said, "Hmm?" Me: "You've got ice in the glass. And you pour the beer on the ice." He says, "Oh, yeah, I didn't get it at first, but now I'm converted."

So I wonder how much it's cultural - also, it seems like a lot of things that aren't drank from a straw like tea, coffee, wine are generally more high status/high fashion type signifier than something like milk or soda.

It should be noted that the beer was probably heineken or some variant. I reacted the same way the first time I saw it, but it turns out that particular brand on rocks makes a refreshing, frothy and very tasty drink to sip on in hot weather as long as you don't let it sit. I don't even like heineken that much, but paired with a glass of cubed ice it's now replaced corona et al as my hot climate beer.

umm, they do that because they do not have refrigerators. and people probably shouldn't be drinking stuff with ice if they are sensitive to waterborne bacterias...

OK, that's part of the answer: now why do some other drinks (beer and wine spring to mind) taste worse through a straw?

Because not all volatiles taste good, or appreciate aeration?

The same reason that beer tastes bad from a can--you don't get the smell.

I beg to differ. Beer tastes better from a glass bottle than from a can. The smell doesn't account for everything there.

Perhaps the can smells bad, and the glass bottle smells neutral.

I've heard it's supposed to taste better in a can, because a can is better-sealed than a bottle and offers better protection against sunlight. Though personally I can't tell the difference.

The same principle of 'temperature matters'. Some things are better cold.

Good beer should be good warm as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com