How do our tastes and memories affect our perception of coffee taste? Coffee flavor description

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Maybe you and I both have the same question, and this question has been bothering me for many years: why is it the same thing, but different people have completely different perceptions of their qualities? In other words, what is the real quality?

Everyone's perception of the outside world is different, we have a unique world outlook and values on everything, and each of us has unique views on fashion, morality, quality, and so on.

It is language that gives us the ability to communicate our personal feelings with others, but language also has its limitations. We can only reflect our personal views and what we know and feel. Each of us has a unique dictionary in our brains. A word is perceptual to you but rational to others. Language also reminds us of pictures, emotions and thoughts, and these perceptions are presented differently in everyone's mind. If you say, "this cup of coffee is of high quality", maybe my view of this cup of coffee is very different from yours, because everyone's thoughts, experiences and educational background can not be replicated.

Learn how to express your perception correctly

How do you know that what you see is exactly the same as the person standing next to you? Maybe one of you is color-blind? When we were young, our parents would tell us that the flowers were red and the sky was blue, and we believed it. But in fact, the so-called "red" and "blue" are just one word and cannot represent everyone's perception. If you find that you are really color-blind during the physical examination, the blue you see is actually purple in the eyes of others?

What I want to say is that in fact, the so-called external world in our eyes is actually made up of our senses. For example, if you hold an apple in your hand, you will perceive its shape, size and color through your sensory organs, as well as the "click" sound and the taste when your lips and teeth touch the skin and flesh. The apple may be a little astringent, because there is malic acid in the apple, and it is a little sweet because there is sugar in the apple. The apple smells good, and this aroma can help us tell which kind of apple it is. Every kind of apple, such as Red Fuji, Guoguang and so on, has a very slight difference in taste and aroma. If we close our eyes, we can feel it.

But at first we do not know the name of each kind of apple, after others tell us, after repeated attempts, we will develop our own understanding of the apple, the more apples we eat, the stronger our ability to recognize, over time, we can tell whether the apple is ripe by its acidity, sweetness and aroma.

This is the power of perception, but perception alone does not make us interested in a certain taste. For example, some people like green apples, some people like ripe apples, and some people don't like apples at all.

Taste buds affect our perception of taste

If we look closely at our sensory organs, we will find that everyone's sensory organs look different. For example, our taste is perceived through taste buds, which respond to sweet, salty, sour, bitter and delicious taste, but the length of the response varies from person to person, depending on the number and shape of our taste buds. If you have fewer taste buds than ordinary people, then what others taste sour tastes soft to you, which means that sour taste is extremely difficult for you to detect and recognize.

Then we are faced with another problem: the sense of balance of taste. A flavor that is difficult to swallow when the concentration is extremely high. Take the sour taste as an example, pure citric acid is too sharp and no one likes it. If we add a little sugar, it may become sweet, but it is still difficult to compete with the strong sour taste. We need a taste to balance the sour taste, for example, a little salty taste can be neutralized with the sour taste, which will make the acid less unbearable. Since each of us has different taste perception, what seems to you to be balanced may not seem to me to be balanced. But I believe we can find a balance that is acceptable to most people.

Remember the taste, sound and smell

As we just said, each of us has different taste perception, which determines how much we like food. For example, "Super products", their super tongue determines that they can't stand some tastes, even if the concentration is very low. But taste is only part of our perceptual puzzle. You know, our senses are like detectors for all kinds of external stimuli. Once external stimuli are detected, the senses will be activated, and the information will be transmitted to the brain, which will then process the information.

This information also causes the brain to produce rich, perceptual memories that can be recalled under certain circumstances, even after a long time, and the senses are the key to these memories. We can recall our thoughts and feelings at that time. For example, the experience of a holiday is very unforgettable, but we have been to countless places, how can we make sure that we do not confuse this experience with other experiences? It is the senses, the taste of some kind of food during that trip, the special aroma in the carriage, the people and food we see, which will make our memories more profound and unforgettable.

Emotions and emotions produced by the senses

Suppose you are enjoying a roast lamb chop, your current emotions and emotions will greatly affect your perception of the taste of the lamb chop. If you are in a good mood now, you may think this is the best lamb chop you have ever eaten; if you are in a bad mood, such as a parent who meets your girlfriend for the first time, you may think this lamb chop is no different from cardboard. But this experience will always be remembered by you, and your memory of the taste of lamb chops will always be associated with your emotions.

This is the influence of our cultural background, personal thoughts and emotions on our sensory senses such as taste and smell. To sum up, our perception of quality stems from our emotional memories at this moment and the external stimuli received by our own sensory organs. In other words, whether a person is interested in coffee or not depends entirely on how he feels when he tastes coffee for the first time, which means that as baristas, we really have a great responsibility, because it is our level and the quality of the coffee we produce, which determines whether customers will fall in love with coffee and embark on the road of exploring the coffee world.