Smell and Taste, Part 1: How to be a better coffee taster
Jan 8, 2024
Discover the fascinating link between smell and taste in coffee, revealing how flavor perception happens behind the eyes! Learn why specialty coffee can taste sweet without sugar and how aroma shapes our appreciation of this beloved beverage. Explore the intricacies of the tongue's taste receptors and practical tips for tasting enhancement. Join tasting expert Mandy Naglich as she shares techniques to sharpen your coffee skills, transforming your coffee experiences into delightful adventures!
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Passion Fruit Flavor Perception
James Harper describes tasting a coffee fermented with passion fruit juice and perceiving intense passion fruit flavors.
He realizes this flavor sensation actually happens in the nasal cavity behind the eyes, not in the mouth itself.
insights INSIGHT
Sweetness Mystery in Black Coffee
Black filter coffee tastes sweet despite negligible sugar content, likely due to molecules stimulating sweet receptors.
Sweet receptors are complex proteins that can be tricked by sugar-like molecules, including artificial sweeteners.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Rinse Mouth Between Tastings
Rinse your mouth with water between coffee tastings to reset your taste receptors and brain.
This practice helps avoid missing acidity and better perceives flavors across multiple coffees.
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So you’ve just taken a sip of a very rare coffee, and flavours of passion fruit explode in your mouth.
But here’s the thing: that flavour of passion fruit is not coming from your mouth. It’s not even coming from your nostrils. It’s being picked up behind your eyes!
In this first episode of The Science of Coffee's second series, I unravel how our sense of smell and taste works to help you be a better coffee taster.
I shrink us down microscopically and we dive into your tongue to show you why good black coffee tastes sweet, even though there’s no sugar in it.
We then travel up into our noses and get stuck in a lot of mucus. This slime might be disgusting, but we need it to be able to smell well.
And finally, with the help of tasting expert and author Mandy Naglich, I show you three effective ways you can train yourself to be a much better coffee taster without having to go on any expensive courses. The trick is to train our internal flavour prediction models!
This episode will help you deepen your appreciation of coffee and its delicious complexity.
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