Tasting Made Simple, Part Two: Why Your Nose Matters

If you've ever had a cup of coffee while suffering through a stuffy nose, you've probably noticed something missing. The coffee is still hot, and you may still register bitterness, but much of its character seems to have disappeared. Everything becomes a little more like cardboard.

That's a useful clue to how we experience flavour. Our tongue does part of the work, and our sense of smell contributes a great deal of the detail. Understanding that relationship helps explain why slowing down makes such a difference when we taste coffee.

In part one, I talked about taking a smaller sip and letting it linger in your mouth. In this second video, I look at the biology behind that experience. We already have the equipment we need: a mouth, a nose, and a brain that brings the information together.

We commonly talk about five basic tastes: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami, or savoury. These provide a foundation for what we experience when we eat and drink. But sweetness alone doesn't tell us whether we're eating a raspberry or something entirely different. The fuller impression depends on more than the taste receptors in our mouth.

This is where our olfactory system, our sense of smell, comes in. Aromatic molecules stimulate sensory cells inside the nose, which send information to the brain. For coffee, those molecules can reach the nose from inside the mouth, through the passage at the back of the throat. This is called retronasal olfaction: smelling from the inside as we eat or drink.

That means aroma is part of the experience while the coffee is in your mouth. You might recognise something that reminds you of raspberry or lemon. Your brain is putting information together and connecting it with things you've smelled and tasted before.

This is also why I talk about giving the coffee a moment. Taking a small sip, moving it around a little, and letting it linger gives you an opportunity to pay attention to that fuller experience. You can notice the sweetness or bitterness alongside the aromas that give the cup its particular character.

The coffee itself matters, of course. In the video, I suggest trying coffee around one to two weeks after roasting, allowing some time for it to settle and release carbon dioxide. Treat that as a starting point for exploring your coffee; different coffees and brewing methods can call for different resting periods.

My more immediate recommendation is to grind just before brewing. Grinding releases aromas from the beans, and you want to make use of that coffee while those aromas are still available. If you already grind at home, pause for a moment and smell the grounds. That familiar burst of fragrance is part of what we're trying to enjoy in the cup.

Then brew, let the coffee cool to a comfortable temperature, and take your time with a few sips. Ask yourself what it reminds you of. You can use your own everyday experiences as references, and the connections may become easier to recognise with practice.

The aim is enjoyment. Understanding a little about how taste and smell work together gives us another way to appreciate something we already do every day. A cup of coffee can offer quite a lot when we give it our attention.