6 Ways to Improve Your Coffee Palate

Coffee is more than a beverage; it’s an experience, offering a wide range of exciting tasting notes and aromas. A well-developed palate—your ability to identify and appreciate specific tasting notes—allows you to explore the depth, complexity, and uniqueness that each small-batch artisanal coffee provides. Much like a fine wine connoisseur doesn’t start as an expert but slowly defines and hones their skills with practice, you can improve your coffee-appreciating palate at home with these helpful tips. 

Start with the Basics

With so many coffee profiles available, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. It’s best to step back, take things slowly, and focus on the basic tastes—sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and savory. Take a sip of your coffee and determine which primary flavors you notice.

Eventually, as you feel more confident with your tasting skills, you’ll find it much easier to identify what you’re tasting. For example, you can go from a coffee with sweetness to noticing a hint of chocolate with precision and ease.

Enhance Your Active Tasting Skills

Developing your palate is like playing a sport as the more you practice, the better of a player you become. As you consume food and beverages throughout the day, take a few minutes to focus on what you’re tasting and think about the specific tasting notes your food and drinks provide.

Instead of just eating an apple, consider the flavor profile—note the sweetness, acidity, bitterness, and texture. What qualities do you notice that make an apple taste like an apple? If you had to describe an apple to someone who had never eaten one, how would you do it? Actively tasting helps you think in a more forward way, which will also help you pinpoint what you enjoy in your coffee and makes it easier to order coffee online because you know which tasting notes you prefer.

Build a Tasting Note Library

Often, we use non-coffee foods to describe the tasting notes we find in coffee. Actively tasting foods is like building a library as you give your tongue more experiences to draw from when tasting coffee. The more extensive your library is, the easier it is to identify unique tasting notes you discover in your coffee. The best way to build that library is to taste new foods actively.

Keep a Coffee Journal

Keep a coffee journal of the coffees you taste and write down the tasting notes you’ve uncovered in them. While journaling won’t improve your palate, translating what you’re tasting into words will. It helps to think (and taste) more actively as you search for the right words to describe what you’re experiencing.

As your palate develops, you’ll find it much easier to become descriptive with your language. Journaling also provides a history of your tasting journey, so reading your notes will show you how much progress you’ve made.

Pay Attention to Tasting Notes

Expert tasters write down all the special tasting notes and characteristics they identify in their coffee. And third wave roasters include descriptions of their products to share their distinct tasting notes. These descriptors are an excellent tool to help you develop your palate. It is easier to find tasting notes when you know what to look for. Reading the description on the bag from your coffee delivery is a fun way to challenge yourself as you seek out those tasting notes.

Taste a Lot of Coffee

Once you determine your favorite coffee, you can sign up for a coffee box subscription to never run out of coffee. Coffee subscriptions are also an easy way to try new coffees to help you select a favorite—or two or three. You can customize your subscription to align with your brewing schedule and get it delivered to your home.

About Verve Coffee Roasters

Coffee has been Verve Coffee Roasters’ craft, ritual, and passion since 2007, when two college friends, Colby Barr and Ryan O’Donovan, founded it to source artisanal small-batch coffee responsibly, from seed to cup. Verve Coffee Roasters sources their single-origin coffee and blends from smallholder farmers worldwide through direct trade relationships, encouraging sustainable agricultural practices. Discover the difference Verve Coffee Roasters can make with a customizable coffee subscription. Find your favorite premium coffee using their convenient online coffee quiz and determine how much you need with their innovative coffee calculator. In addition to their coffee gift subscriptions, Verve Coffee Roasters also has cafes across California and Japan.

Discover premium small-batch artisanal coffee from Verve Coffee Roasters at https://www.vervecoffee.com/