Why calibrating self-senses is important to the accuracy of cup testing? how to treat cup testing correctly?

Few people know more about the nuances of coffee than my colleagues, including several experienced baristas, two Q-Graders, one Q-Instructor, and another colleague who has worked in baking, QC and Green Coffee for more than 10 years. I think it will be a perfect group, and here I can test my hypothesis that showing the same coffee brewing in separate cups will (intentionally or unintentionally cause tasters) to distinguish between the two samples.

Before conducting the experiment, I searched the Internet for any research that could clarify the phenomenon I was exploring. Unfortunately, I have never encountered an experiment using exactly the same method before. But I did find an enlightening article about how taste can drink one mouthful after another-even in articles about wine. Like most drinks, coffee makes saliva flow. The increase in saliva "can reduce the bitterness and astringent taste". Therefore, I assume that drinkers will find "B" sweeter, assuming they only drink one or two mouthfuls of "A" beforehand. The food or drink they used to eat may also have an impact. "if the food is particularly acidic, it may reduce the acidity of [drinks] (perhaps paradoxically)," the authors point out. " However, I did not control this variable and suggested that further research be conducted 30 minutes before the start of the experiment to limit the intake of any food or drink other than water.

I brewed the CJ1310 Uganda Kapkwai Sipi Falls natural viaduct on the researcher's Stagg X Brewer with 25g of coffee and 400g of water (1 to 16). Then, I divided the homogenized brewed coffee into two glass bottles, labeled "A" and "B", which I heated in advance to make sure the coffee was poured at roughly the same temperature. I took this step to eliminate (or at least reduce) the possibility that tasters perceive flavor differences only based on coffee temperature. After waiting for a few minutes, I poured the coffee from the "A" and "B" glass bottles into different cups and asked them to write down tasting notes on a piece of paper.

Before all my colleagues took notes, I didn't reveal that the two cups of coffee were exactly the same beer. Needless to say, they were surprised that they had just tasted "exactly the same" coffee. Table 1 confirms my hypothesis that participants are not aware that they are tasting the same thing, causing them to distinguish between "A" and "B". In addition, the six of them have a clear preference between the two. Everyone but one prefers "A" to "B", contrary to my hypothesis, which is that when they mix the tannins in their coffee, they will find B sweeter. Given that five of the six samples have a clear preference, I encourage further experiments with a larger sample size to explore the study's preference for "B"-the second of the two cups.

After finishing the experiment, I saw an article written by my colleague Chris Chris Kornman in a 2016 book exploring how cup color affects flavor perception. He solved this problem by putting four different kinds of coffee into five different color cups (black, red, blue, white, cedar) and evaluating the sweetness, acidity and viscosity of each cup. Although our intentions and methods are different, we have come to some similar conclusions about the consistency of flavor perception. Chris stressed that most of the tasters in the experiment rated the same cup of coffee differently according to the color of the cup. Although it is difficult to draw broad conclusions, as Chris explains, "our taste is most obviously affected by visual stimuli, but it does not depend on coffee and evaluators in a consistent way". In fewer words

At the same time, we have several examples that make people stand out in tasting and distinguishing. There seems to be no more incredible achievement in tasting and calibration than World Cup champion wine tasters or thousands of Q Arabica graders around the world. How do we explain the paradox that when tasting coffee, humans can be perfect one day and awe-inspiring the next?

I think the key to understanding this contradiction lies in the background of people's wine tasting. I thought of several common situations. In the coffee industry, some of us are familiar with triangular cupping, which is a key part of the Q Grader exam. Unlike standard cupping, triangulation challenges the ability of tasters to perceive differences in coffee characteristics. In the standard triangulation, two of the three cups are the same cup of coffee, while the third cup is different. In this case, the taster is looking to identify two identical cups. If I model the experiment in this way of tasting, I believe that most, if not all, of them will be able to correctly identify the two cups in the context of triangulation.

This is different from the background of the CJ Analysis tasting I used in the experiment. Although I did not prompt or mislead the tasters to think I had changed a variable, through repeated tasting, they were told that the two brews were actually different and that they might want the tasting to have the same structure. Obviously, my colleagues turned a blind eye to the expectation that they should distinguish between "A" and "B". The main conclusion I got from this experiment is that context is crucial. If you expect something, your mind will do its best to shape reality around that expectation.