
Why Drinks Taste Better When Sipped Through A Straw - jamesbressi
http://www.finecooking.com/item/19119/why-straws-make-the-drink-better
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tptacek
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_.

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flatulent1
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.

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

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nocman
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.

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

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

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duck
_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.

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lionhearted
> 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.

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AmericanOP
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.

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vinhboy
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...

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

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

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

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

