Taste Exercises – “Focus on the Nose”

As I try to put some of my theories about taste into practice, I’m finding that the main problem that most of us have with tasting things, is that we rely too much on our tongue. Actually the secret is to focus on the nose.

Let me give you an example. Sip your cup of coffee. What is the first taste that comes to your mind? This is multiple choice: a) sweet, b) sour, c) bitter, d) salty, e) fatty, f) umami (let’s just call it savory – you know, the taste of a delicious steak). If you are like me you would have picked c) bitter. Now I would never normally call a cup of coffee bitter, but when made to think about it after the first sip – my tongue says, bitter.

Let’s give ourselves a break, and for a period of time, if the main thing we notice about better quality coffee is the lack of bitterness – we’ll just enjoy that quality. But if all we can judge about coffee is varying degrees of bitterness, we won’t feel it is justified to go the extra yard into the world of specialty coffees.

So what to do? Try to develop your nose more and more. I think this is very subtle but it can be developed. Tomorrow morning, enjoy your first few sips as you usually do. Then try to fill your nostrils with the rich aroma of your coffee. After you have taken a sip, exhale through your nose. You won’t notice much. But over time your sense of smell with coffee will get more and more sensitive.

Demystifying Taste – Pt. Three – Our Brain

http://www.tastescience.com/saggitalbrain.jpg

Why is it that eating sometimes provides incredible enjoyment – well . . . until we overeat and groan in pain. The nerves from our taste buds along with those from our sense of smell input signals to our brain that triggers our emotions. What kind of emotions? Anywhere from, “Oh man, I can’t believe how good this tastes!” to “Yuck! That is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever tasted!”

Nerves from those emotion centers are also very close to that part of our brain that allows us to make decisions – do we spit it out or take another bite?

The more I investigate taste, the more it is turning out to be more complicated than I  ever thought. But here is what I would like to do: come up with a little method by which we stop and think about the taste, the smell, and the mental images that come to us when we are eating or drinking. We may not become professional tasters for a gourmet magazine, but we can at least build a little muscle in our palate to begin enjoying the finer subtleties of good coffee.

Demystifying Taste – Pt. Two — Taste + Smell = Flavor

I’m currently staying at a hotel in Philadelphia this week for a work-related conference. On one of the cable channels, a wine-tasting show pointed out that there is a difference between taste and flavor. According to the show there are four different tastes but thousands of flavors.

Well based on my previous post on “Demystifying Taste – Pt. One,” there are actually six tastes, because that is what our taste buds are able to detect. There are thousands of flavors because flavor comes from taste plus our sense of smell. Ever tasted chocolate when your nose was stuffed up with a cold? It’s just not the same. It’s kind of like trying to distinguish the color of your shirt in dim lights. It just doesn’t look right. Strictly speaking, the taste of chocolate is sweet and maybe bitter for dark chocolate. But the flavor that everyone recognizes comes from its characteristic aroma as well.

So you got that? Taste and smell gives us flavor. We will step by step educate our palates and heighten our ability to taste and describe what we taste.

Demystifying Taste – Pt. One

cool diagram from www.raymondsbrain.com

This is the beginning of my endeavor into The World of Taste. I’m going to embark into the world of coffee tasting. No doubt enjoying coffee is all about taste along with the buzz factor from the caffeine. I have a hunch that becoming better tasters just requires a little education and practice. So to be able to take the enjoyment of coffee up another notch, I think getting our taste buds in shape is in order.

I found an interesting site about the science of taste. With a little consideration, I think most people would say that our taste buds can distinguish four things: sweet, sour, salty, bitter. The Taste Science Laboratory claims that there are actually two more tastes: fat and something called umami (pronounced oo-mah-mee). I never thought fat was a taste, but it does make sense – this sense of taste is probably stronger for me than my wife – she is Jack Sprat who can eat no fat, I am Jack Sprat’s wife who can eat no lean. The big surprise is that our taste buds recognize something that the Japanese discovered and called, umami – that delicious flavor in meat. This taste bud is actually stimulated by MSG. That is why you’ll find MSG listed in the ingredients on your Doritos bag.

So you got that? There are six tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, fat, and umami. Is your mouth watering for a nice piece of steak or a juicy hamburger? Mine is.

Sleep Deprived Rats Benefit from Coffee Aroma

Now I don’t know if this study was funded by the coffee industry, making this information essentially propaganda. But it doesn’t seem so. Actually this type of research is what I do for a living and it seems legitimate.

Researchers have found that even the smell of coffee produces positive effects in the brain. A scientific study was done on rats to see the effect of coffee aroma on their brains. 30 rats were divided into four groups:

(1) control rats – no stress, with no coffee aroma,

(2) stressed rats – with no coffee aroma,

(3) no stress rats – with coffee aroma,

(4) stressed rats – with coffee aroma.

Rats from group (3) – the no stress rats with coffee aroma, showed 17 genes that were more active (the technical term is expressed) compared to rats from group (1), the control rats (no stress – with no coffee aroma). So coffee aroma has a definite effect on the brains of rats.

When the rats from group (2) – stressed rats/no coffee aroma – were compared to rats from group (4) – stressed rats/with coffee aroma, coffee exposure made 11 genes more active, and 2 genes less active. Rats stressed with sleep deprivation were affected by coffee aroma.

When the proteins in the rat brains were studied and compared, 25 differences were seen among the four groups. The protein levels in the brains of the stressed rats who enjoyed the wonderful aroma of coffee had antioxidant and stress relieving activities.

So tell your friends that don’t like the taste of coffee. You don’t even need to drink it for its benefits. Even smelling the wonderful aroma will make your brain do things helpful to your body.

This study was done by three institutions: 1) the Department of Food and Nutrition, College of Human Ecology, at the Seoul National University, 2) Smell and Taste clinic, Department of Otorhinolaryngology, University of Dresden [Germany] Medical School, and 3) Human Stress Signal Research Center (HSS), National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Health Technology Research Center, Tsukuba Japan. The article was published in The Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, 2008, 56, 4665-4673.

Rancidification – short and sweet

I’m going to make the topic of coffee going rancid short and sweet. If anyone wants a more in depth and even scientific version of this, let me know.

When coffee (or anything with oils) goes rancid, the coffee oils react with either water or oxygen. This is why when storing roasted coffee, you want it in a dry and dark container. Moisture in the air will provide the water that will make the coffee go rancid. Light and oxygen in the air (with the help of enzymes in the coffee beans themselves), will oxidize coffee oils, making it rancid.

So don’t store coffee in the refrigerator. Don’t store coffee in the freezer. The only time storing coffee in the freezer may be ok is if it is vacuum packed and you plan to store it for a period of time. Once you take the bag out of the freezer, let it come to room temperature. Keep it at room temperature. Use it within two weeks.

A tin kept on your kitchen counter or in your pantry is a good place for coffee. The more the roasted coffee is exposed to light, the more chance there is for it to go rancid.

Now let’s talk about the coffee I got from the coffee bins at Giant Eagle: 1) they were not vacuum packed, but were exposed to any moisture in the air, 2) they were not stored in the dark, but were exposed to the fluorescent lighting of the store almost 24 hours a day. No wonder the coffee tasted rancid!

But let’s be fair to Giant Eagle. This past weekend, I bought a bag of Starbucks coffee from them. The bag at least had “Feb” typed on it. So at the very worst it may have been three weeks old, which is better than three months old coffee. I made a cup for myself this morning. I did not get the upset feeling in my stomach. Conclusion: not all coffees sold at a supermarket are rancid. But sales to unload inventory may not be the best way to go – even though the price may be tempting. They may be three months old coffee.