How to taste coffee correctly?

For people who are used to tasting regular coffee according to Tuso, this description should not be unfamiliar, is it? First of all, whether or not you have eaten raspberries and blackcurrants in your life, it refers to fresh fruit, not the fudge sprinkled with powdered sugar as a child, if you are a good nose teacher who can distinguish all kinds of fine tastes and describe them clearly, it should be a great "gift"! But don't you have to have this kind of perception to really know how to taste regular coffee? Or, how to taste this cup of coffee in front of you?

The first thing to make clear is that we are more or less able to distinguish the subtleties of coffee: for example, this cup of coffee in hand, um, very fragrant, not overly irritating acid, a bit similar. Grapefruit, shredding will have a sweet feeling and so on. In most cases, we don't need to be trained, and we all know whether we like it or whether it has a particularly unpleasant smell. Drinking coffee is not an art understood by an elegant or powerful person. Drinking coffee is the same as looking for delicious food in the alley everywhere. There is no need for a swarm and a swollen face and fat people. Like it? Or don't like it? Like all experience, drinking too much also has a chance to become an expert. Before we really understand the complex flavor of coffee, we first understand how people feel about coffee.

Feeling is part of the nervous system of the human body. Any sensation consists of peripheral sensory receptors (accepting external changes), afferent nerves (transmitting changes) and central nerves (interpreting changes and further responding). When we feel food, it is the result of smell and taste accepting the chemical changes of the outside world. When specific molecules in food stimulate the peripheral receptors (for example, the receptors on olfactory bulb cells pick up taste molecules (tastant), while the receptors on taste cells receive stimulation of odor molecules (odorant), chemical stimulation and coupling will trigger ion channels and intracellular signaling systems, resulting in changes in membrane potential, which are transmitted to the central nervous system by olfactory and glossopharyngeal nerves. It is received by the cerebral cortex and connected with the memory system to determine the follow-up response.

In terms of taste, most physiology textbooks recognize that human beings have the perception to recognize the following four flavors: sweet, salty, sour and bitter. In addition, there is a sense of taste that recognizes specific amino acids, including proline, which is closely related to meat protein, which is called "fresh" (Savory in English, Umami in Japanese, and monosodium glutamate familiar to the Chinese provides this taste seasoning). These flavors can be found in all foods, and coffee is no exception. These five tastes are the basis of coffee's complex taste.

The receptors and ion channels on the taste cell determine the specific molecules that the cell receives. For example, sweetness is recognized by a receptor called G-protein, while salty taste is identified by sodium channels on the cell membrane. The discovery of molecular biology and proteosome in recent years has not only made the mechanism and transmission route of each flavor clearer, but also opened up a new field of vision for taste. In the past, it was thought that there was a so-called "taste zone" on the tongue, and it was believed that the front and back sides of the tongue recognized different tastes. The current tone is that each taste bud cell is composed of a variety of taste cells, each taste cell detects the corresponding taste molecules, and each taste cell only shows the same type of receptor. Therefore, all the taste buds on the tongue can feel sweet, salty, sour, bitter, fresh and so on. Since most of the food we come into contact with has more than one taste and can stimulate several taste receptors at the same time, if olfactory and warm stimuli are added, the matter of "tasting" alone is very complicated.

In the case of smell, the connection between smell and memory is closer. Different odor molecules stimulate different olfactory cells to respond and transmit the smell message to the olfactory bulb, which is then transmitted to the brain through the olfactory nerve. As the olfactory bulb is quite close to the limbic system of the supervisor's long-term memory and emotion, the analyzed message is sent back to the limbic system synchronously, connecting with past experience and reactions. This is why the fragrance of flowers can be recognized when tasting specific African beans, and it can be further pointed out that it is jasmine.

In the final analysis, the so-called tasting is actually a very complex physiological process, and the food flavor we perceive is the product of the integration of multiple senses in the brain. It is not only Pingchang's perception of the present, past experience and memory, but also our perception of food flavor. At the same time, it will be deepened and revised with the number of experiences and feedback, affecting our final perception. In fact, the experience method (also known as "cup test" Cupping), which is talked about by people in the field of coffee, describes perception in a systematic and specific way, and connects it with experience, so that abstract taste experience can be traced back and recorded.