Coffee Taste Test Using Same Filter (Blind Sampling & Data Collection)

A question occurred to me today. As normal, I need my afternoon coffee. However, feeling excessively lazy, instead of making a new pot of coffee, I decided to simply fill the coffee pot back up and use the same filter from earlier this morning. As you can imagine, it wasn't exactly indulgent. Yet, I began to wonder if the coffee I was drinking was actually weaker, or was it my anticipation of it being weaker that made it so. Project!

Have your students conduct a blind taste test with other faculty members being their dummies. I would even let your students call them dummies...at least for the day. The taste test will involve each faculty to sample 3 small cups of coffee and record their data without knowing which cup of coffee is which.

Cup 1: First pot of coffee.

Cup 2: Same filter, same coffee, 2nd pot of water

Cup 3: Same filter, same coffee, 3^rd pot of water

The survey should be something simple, but measurable. For example, have them rank each cup of coffee on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the highest.

Things to account for

1. When ranking, will the dummy be comparing the tastes of one cup to the other cups only, or will they be comparing them to previous cups of coffee. For example, if the dummy loves a White Chocolate Mocha from Starbucks as their number 10, they may rank all three of your cups a 1's or 2's. Thus, to account for this, you may want to raise the ranking system from 1-10 to something like 1-100.
2. Will the cups be served black or with sweater and cream? If the latter, you shuld make sure that each cup receives nearly the same amount.

After Results:

Have each student calculate some descriptive statistics (mean, median, mode, standard deviation, etc) and draw some conclusions. Does using the same filter and same coffee really make the coffee noticeably weaker? Or is it in our imagination?

Finally, the most important part of the activity is the after-activity discussion. Why might the tests be inaccurate? Was are sample size appropriate? What could we have done better? How might a double-blind test affect the results? Why might companies use blind taste tests when comparing their product to their competitors

Have fun...send me some pics if you decide to do the project!