① The water used in coffee extraction
The excitement of international travel begins in earnest at the airport. As soon as you enter the airport, you feel like you’ve already embarked on your journey. But this joy is fleeting; if you’re on a long-haul flight, you’ll get exhausted on the plane. After a long time in the cabin, your body feels sluggish, and the seats become uncomfortable, making you toss and turn.
Many passengers seek coffee in the cabin to alleviate fatigue. Airlines provide warm coffee after meals. Coffee always smells good and tastes delicious, but it often tastes bland on airplanes. You may have wondered at least once why the same coffee tastes different on a plane.
So, let’s look at why the coffee served on an airplane tastes different.
The taste of coffee depends not only on the beans but also on the taste of the water. Have you ever heard that? The water used to extract coffee on an airplane is stored in the in-flight drinking water tank. Some airlines directly provide passengers with bottled water from outside, but most use drinking water stored in the in-flight tank.
A U.S. airline flight attendant revealed that they aren’t sure whether the airplane’s water tank gets adequately disinfected. So, they don’t know what the water tastes like. This flight attendant revealed that cabin crew members don’t even drink coffee or water on the plane, which created a buzz. Moreover, the flight attendants’ association in the U.S. exposed the environment of the water tank. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data in 2013, 12% of the drinking water randomly collected from over 300 U.S. aircraft by the EPA was contaminated with coliform bacteria.
The cruising altitude of an airplane is roughly 35,000 feet in the air. That’s about 6.21 miles above the ground. If you boil water at a high altitude, it boils at a much lower temperature. Because the water isn’t hot enough, you can only extract some coffee beans, even from good beans. By the time the passenger tastes it, the fragrant taste of the coffee has disappeared, leaving only a bitter taste.
② Changes in taste due to the environment
The noise and olfactory senses in the airplane cabin affect our taste buds, making coffee taste particularly bland to us. The coffee itself may be bland, but this is due to changes in the body depending on the environment. The cabin has high altitude, low pressure, dryness, vibrations, and much noise. At this time, not only our taste buds but also our olfactory organs and digestive organs fail to function correctly.
According to a German research institute Fraunhofer Society study, some of our taste buds become paralyzed under certain atmospheric pressure. People now feel the intensity of the salty and sweet tastes they usually perceive as 30% lower. Due to the pressure in the airplane cabin, dry air, and altitude, our taste buds weaken, making the coffee taste bland.
You may not feel the coffee is very sweet even if you add a lot of sugar. The cabin decreases the intensity of salty and sweet tastes, so chefs heavily season the in-flight meals. It’s much saltier and sweeter than the food you eat on the ground, but you don’t feel the seasoning is vital when you eat in-flight meals.
③ Recommending wine instead of coffee
Coffee on an airplane tastes more unpleasant, but the same wine tastes better on a plane. Wine tastes much better when drunk in the sky. The dry air and pressure in the cabin dry out the nose, preventing us from smelling various scents.
So, even if you drink wine that doesn’t taste good, you can’t smell it, so you feel it tastes good. The in-flight wine sommelier of Delta Air Lines in the U.S. said, “Even wine that usually tastes bad tastes somewhat better at high altitudes.” Experts recommend light and fragrant wine in the cabin.
It might be nice to taste a glass of wine offered in-flight during the flight.
However, drinking too much wine can also be a problem. You get drunk faster when you drink wine on an airplane than usual. A psychologist revealed that drinking alcohol at high altitudes has up to 3-4 times the effect of the same amount of alcohol consumed on the ground.
As the altitude increases, the amount of oxygen becomes sparse, and the amount of oxygen delivered to the brain rapidly decreases. Therefore, you feel drunk faster when you drink alcohol. For this reason, some airlines limit the amount of alcohol they provide passengers.
You should know that drinking too much wine on a flight can also be harmful.
By. Seo Sung-min (fv_editor@fastviewkorea.com)
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