I’ve often told people that I taste things for a living, usually in jest. But the thing is, we really do taste and identify flavors as part of our job. People are coming to us for coffee as experts, and their questions about flavor and tasting notes shouldn’t be brushed off. Your palate is already more highly trained than most of the public; as hands and fingers are to a classical pianist, so are our palates to us. And yet of all our five senses, the sense of taste is perhaps least understood both scientifically and for us as coffee professionals.

There’s a lot of misinformation around our sense of taste and how we perceive flavor (which is different than taste, involving our sense of smell and touch as well). For example, you were probably all taught the “tongue map” in school, or maybe even by me or another trainer. You know the one, where you taste salty and sweet on the tip of your tongue, and bitter in the back. Here’s the big reveal though: that map is mostly nonsense. I say mostly because there is a bit of research suggesting there are higher concentrations of taste buds that pick up salty and sweet on the tip of your tongue for example, but they’re not solely found there. You can prove this to yourself with something really bitter like an aspirin or some dark chocolate; hold it on the tip or the middle of your tongue and see if it doesn’t taste bitter. Another bit of falsehood we probably all believe is that humans don’t have a good sense of smell. The exact number isn’t known, but high estimates are in the billions regarding how many distinct smells the human nose can identify. For comparison the human eye, one of the most developed organs in nature, can only distinguish between around ten million colors. We’re particularly well suited for retronasal olfaction – that is, to smell things that travel back up through your nasal cavity when you swallow.

What we don’t have, is language centered around identifying smells. We have lots of different words for “red:” maroon, dark red, light red, very light red, pink, rouge, burgundy… But what language do you use to distinguish between a smoked pork smell and a smoked brisket smell? That’s where tasting thoughtfully and often comes in. What we’re trying to do is create a dictionary of sense memories that we can call to mind instantly. Tasting and identifying a single spice/fruit/etc. is difficult but picking that flavor out of hundreds of others mixed is nearly impossible. That’s why we try to commit the smell and taste of cinnamon, for example, to memory: so that when we taste cinnamon in coffee, we can call it out immediately without having to think about it. Don’t just think “cinnamon;” think spicy, sweet, aromatic, warming, cookies, Christmas. Having these associations will make it easier to identify in the future. The goal is that kind of memorization, not necessarily the skill of identifying at the drop of a hat. It’s also helpful to taste things side by side, whether it’s coffee, fruit, cheese, beer – or anything really. Notice which is the most acidic versus which is the least, which has a stronger aroma of strawberry, which is the most bitter, etc.

Tasting thoughtfully can be a frustrating pursuit, but I’ve found it to be one of the greatest sources of enrichment and even joy in my life. Here are just a few quick pointers for developing your sense memory and getting the most out of your coffee – really anything you eat or drink.

1.     Taste (and smell) EVERYTHING. Never turn down the opportunity to taste something new.

2.     Even taste (and smell) the things you don’t like. For example, don’t skip on mushrooms – there’s a world of delicious flavor there. Who knows? You might even become a fan.

3.     Taste with friends. Host whiskey tastings (a personal favorite pastime of mine), wine tastings, coffee flights, charcuterie boards, chocolate – anything you can find three or more of can make for a great tasting. Talk about it out loud as you taste.

4.     Remember to speak the name of what you’re tasting out loud and associate it with a few descriptors and memories. This will help connect the neural pathways and create those coveted sense memories.

 This is going to sound cheesy but remember to have fun. How crazy is it that we get to do this for a living? Now get out there and taste everything you can.