A very interesting thread. It is my understanding that people being taught how to taste wine compare their taste experience against standardized vials of aromas.

Like here: http://www.cheapfunwines.com/arch...ne_bouquet_kit.php

Does such kit exist for coffee tasting? If not maybe something like this is needed and would help?

Geoffrey

Dogshot wrote:As another challenge to the objectivity of taste, I always thought that the tongue can sense 4 basic flavours: sweet, sour, bitter, salt. Apparently "umami" is a 5th taste (proteinaliscious, meaty savouryness), which we did not classify until the popular presence of Eastern cuisine entered our consciousness. (Maybe it's not - all my knowledge of umami comes form wikipedia). How did this escape us for so long if taste is more an objective assessment than a judgment based on some form of comparison and prior knowledge.

It never escaped us. The four flavour thing is a fairytale. People telling you about that japanasians have got 5 flavours are just trying to impress you with their AWSUM knowledge about foreign cultures.
The only thing "umami" is good for is that it's a telltale to spot impressionable idiots.
For example, 'fishy' is a very definite flavour. Fishy isn't sour, bitter, sweet, or salt or even umami. It's just fishy.

Is this about subjectivity of taste, or is it about the happiness that people derive from what they consume or experience? The quote at the top of the thread was about choice and the assumption/thread-driving-frustration seems to be that properly educated, people should always prefer objectively better products. Will they make them happier? I suspect that the answer is approximately "it depends". I know someone who actively dislikes the Sidamos that I pull on my Elektra, he likes his coffee more bitter, more harsh tasting. He and I are looking for different things in our cups of coffee.

I don't think that it is obvious at all that taste is objective in some absolute sense. There are clearly objectively identifiable parts to the range of taste responses that the majority of the population display(ingesting excessive quantities of the wrong alkaloids is bad, for example, so bitter and sweet are clearly distinguishable by most people), but we are not talking about bad coffee being toxic in a big enough way to kill people, we are talking about the difference between merely drinkable and excellent, which is a different range of responses. I'm not convinced of the obviousness at that level.

The idea that it is possible for someone's taste to be "incorrect... in a very objective sense" leads to what concrete actions exactly? That kind of talk bothers me.

another_jim wrote:
Coffee that has been hand picked and sorted, well prepped, transported fast, and roasted by somebody who cares is better than a collection of branches, stones, unripe and rotten cherries, that are triaged, steamed, roasted, packed, and left to go stale on an assembly line. If you don't think it tastes better, your taste is incorrect in a very objective sense, you are not tasting the reality of the two coffees.

This assumes that the reality of two different sets of people are the same but their realities are based on a host of different experiential factors accumulated over time and also on their perceptions of what really matters.

I believe that some people are truly incapable of tasting a notable and worthwhile (to them) difference unless or until they are trained. But if they don't care then it's a moot point. I had a girlfriend who liked the food at Olive Garden and insisted that she couldn't taste the difference between that and high end Italian food. I'm certain that if she cared enough to "educate her palate" she could know the difference but she didn't care.

Here's the argument in a nutshell:

• That taste is subjective would come as a very big and very lethal surprise to just about any organism, including us for most of our history, that relies on it to distinguish what will nourish from what will kill.
• We no longer need taste to keep us alive. So we can harness the same ability to discern the chemical content of what we ingest and put it to some other use, one more playful and interesting.
• For instance, we could use it to distinguish foods that take skill, effort and creativity from those that merely increase shareholder value.
• If we do this, taste remains objective. Instead of distinguishing poison from food, it distinguishes quality, i.e., the rarity, skill, effort, etc, that go into foodstuffs, from trash.

It's obvious that taste is a perfectly objective sense, like all the others, albeit out of a job in the modern affluent part of the world. So why are people so misinformed? That's easy to understand too. It's the only way advertisers can persuade people that the crap which merely increases shareholder equity actually tastes good.

This gets back to an assumption that a majority of people either do or should care - and quite often they don't.

The ability to discern and qualitatively assess differences in food/beverage quality - an attribute we might define as a person's "taste" is radically different from the fundamental and inherent physical sense known as "taste". The fact that my physiology and genetic composition equips me - and nearly all other humans - to "to distinguish what will nourish from what will kill" doesn't mean we all have the capability or the inclination to distinguish gradations of quality.

When my 87 year old father comes to dinner and drinks exceptionally good coffee that I grind and brew fresh he always comments on how good it is because he can. But he'll turn around the next day, go to Flo's Diner in Canastota NY - 'Home of the 10 Cent Coffee" (with free refills) and tell me that their coffee is great - because he doesn't care.

The training of one's palate be it for wine or coffee is one with merit IMHO.

In that vein remember that there are individuals who are color blind due to their genetics and these individuals have to adapt their behavior when driving as an example to know that red is universally on top of the traffic signal and green on the bottom. Normally, the consequences of knowing one color from another may not matter but the example used, driving, forces the issue as one of personal safety and the safety of others.

Also in that vein I recall watching my grandmother over the years change her eating habits such that she started drinking sweet wine in the evening and preferred sweet treats in general much more then she had previously. As we age it turns out that those sweet taste receptors become dominant. Sweets were in fact the only foods she could readily taste any more. We all have genetic variation that explains why some prefer saltier food then others and so on. We can certainly adapt and change our habits to eventually like that baked potato without any salt but that again goes up to the first sentence above about training ones palate. So we all better enjoy our complex layered multi-flavored espressos while we are young enough to discern the difference between it and a Folgers with four sugar packets. Ultimately though who is to say what's best with regard to a subjective matter where the consequences affect only the individual?

Phaelon56 wrote:This gets back to an assumption that a majority of people either do or should care - and quite often they don't.

The ability to discern and qualitatively assess differences in food/beverage quality - an attribute we might define as a person's "taste" is radically different from the fundamental and inherent physical sense known as "taste".

You agree with me, but you don't know it because you are mesmerized by pop culture subjectivism. Again, apply your argument to sight and you'll see what I mean:

-- You are not born with the ability to avoid onrushing cars. You are born with the sensory capacity to see the car, the motor capacity to avoid it, and the judgment that this is a good thing to do. Based on this, you learn to avoid onrushing cars
-- Your argument is that while our ability to sense tastes and to act on them is similar, the judgment to avoid onrushing cars is fundamentally different from the judgment to avoid Lavazza.
-- If judgments are entirely arbitrary and not based on nature, a la Kant, then this is false. We are just as free to be self destructive as we are to be tasteless.
-- If judgments are based on nature, a la Aristotle, Darwin or just about everyone who hasn't taken a philosophy course, then avoiding cars is a lot more important than avoiding Lavazza, but avoiding Lavazza is still based on something real, not something subjective, the difference between it and well prepared coffees.
-- So in the end you are saying that one should accord with nature in important things like avoiding oncoming cars, but can do as one pleases for less important things like avoiding industrial coffee.
-- This is what I said: we have limited time and resources, so we have to pick and chose. But on those things we do pick, we can definitely acquire the capacity to taste skill, hard work and creativity in foodstuffs, and we can accept that this type of objectivity is the right standard for what tastes good.
-- If you do this, your taste will no longer be subjective. So having purely subjective taste, i.e. taste judgments that do not respond in some orderly fashion to changes in what is being tasted, is a choice; just like wearing a blindfold is a choice.

another_jim wrote:Everyone who has met up with other espresso lovers, and walked around, say at the SCAA, trying shots, will quickly see how objective (or at least common) taste is.

...amongst coffee lovers who are so in to it that they'll go to an SCAA Convention. While there is something to what you say, I'm not sure that this is the litmus test you get to use to prove it!

Taste is subjective, as it is subject to the sour, sweet, salty, savory, sour population and location of sensitivities on each individual tongue, and the experiences that we've had growing up. I used to love canteloupe, and missed it sorely while I was in Europe for four years as a kid. When I returned to my Aunt's in Florida, she had them growing in her garden, and allowed me to eat as much as I wanted. The taste of canteloupe was something that I abhorred for the next coupla decades. I gradually was able to stomach it, and now even sort of like it, but my tasted changed dramatically. One day I thought that the taste of canteloupe was the bomb. By the week's end, the smell of it would nauseate me.
Pretty subjective.
While every taste is simply a chemical change on the taste bud, everyone has different taste buds. And then, the entire thing goes to the brain for interpretation, and everyone has different wiring up there that is remarkably dependent on what they tasted on a regular basis their whole life.
If taste were objective, we would be able to say to someone that says that they don't like coffee, "Of course you do, you're just to ignorant to know that coffee tastes good!" And, always be right, instead of just occasionally. (We all know *someone* that said that they didn't like coffee, and then tasted one of *our* pulls, and now drinks coffee regularly when the come to our house...)

Dogshot wrote:The comparison between sight and taste is not the same. Identifying "red" is a basic assessment, whereas tasting something as "good" or "bad" is a value judgment.

The argument is about whether those value judgments are inherently based on personal preferences, or whether they can be based on some systematic property of what is being sensed.

For instance, you can chose to prefer cocktail tables on a coin flip. On what just appeals to you or others. On how comfortable they are for putting your feet on. On how well they store magazines. On how much craft and hand work went into them. Or on a dozen other things. Some of these grounds are objective standards, some are subjective. In other words, whether your taste in cocktail tables is objective or subjective is entirely up to you, there is no epistemological or philosophical rule that it has to be subjective.

I recommend basing your taste in coffee on its terroir, and on the care that went into growing, prepping, roasting and preparing it. That is an objective standard for taste in coffee. Choosing to use it consistently is up to you.

You agree with me, but you don't know it because you are mesmerized by pop culture subjectivism.

Your answer is offensive and I deserve better as does any other forum member who communicates in a cordial way hoping to have civil discourse. I could easily respond by noting that you know very little about me and have made a subjective snap judgment of me as a person - and that you did so because you're mesmerized by an adherence to highbrow culture theoretical philosophy and a belief that scientific "objectivity" is a universally valid and inviolable construct that can be applied to human thinking, perceptions and behavior. But I wouldn't say that.

I'll simply disagree instead.

-- So in the end you are saying that one should accord with nature in important things like avoiding oncoming cars, but can do as one pleases for less important things like avoiding industrial coffee.

I'm not commenting on what anyone should do - I'm simply commenting on my perception - which is what I think of as reality. I regularly see people consciously avoiding oncoming cars and I also see many of them drinking industrial coffee.

The fact that they'll get killed or injured by an oncoming car if it hits them is objective. Their realization and of that fact is subjective and meets with nearly universal acceptance - most people want to live and not get injured.

But their subjective tastes and/or values (e.g. what they are willing to spend their discretionary income on) about an objective qualitative difference in coffee often results in a subjective decision very different from the path you or I might follow.

In the grand scheme of things it's of no importance what I think about people's actions - nearly all of them will continue avoiding oncoming cars even if I dislike them intensely and think they should step in front of one (not that I've ever thought that then or now).

But I CAN have some influence on some of the people I meet in helping to shape or alter the path of their subjective opinions about the objective differences in coffee. And having these beliefs is in no way an indication that I am "mesmerized by pop culture subjectivism".

Really Jim... you know better than that - or I certainly hope you do.

another_jim wrote:-- ...we can definitely acquire the capacity to taste skill, hard work and creativity in foodstuffs, and we can accept that this type of objectivity is the right standard for what tastes good.
-- If you do this, your taste will no longer be subjective. So having purely subjective taste, i.e. taste judgments that do not respond in some orderly fashion to changes in what is being tasted, is a choice; just like wearing a blindfold is a choice.

I think the last is a does-not-quite-follow, or at least is an is-not-proven. It's probably true if the individual in question has sufficient sensitivity in all of the myriads of receptors that must respond to the taste standard in question. (I didn't know that there were such things, by the way; I had wrongly assumed that there weren't.) Is there any study that describes intrinsic variations in response to a suitably complex taste standard, across individuals?

By the way, I think there is some difficulty here in confusing subjective vs objective vs describable vs individual variation vs value-judgment. Taste is reasonably objective (*) but very difficult to describe because of its complexity; and, it seems plausible that individual variation is greater than e.g. color response variation, again because of the complexity.

(*) meaning that if you CAN taste something, you'll taste that identical something the same way every time; subject to such things as receptor overload, nasal health, funny medications, etc.

HB wrote:...but the head judge will note why Judge A's scores are different than B, C, and D's, should the competitor ask during the post-competition debriefing.

the fact that experienced tasting judges taste differently should be evidence enough that taste is not and cannot be absolute (close maybe, but not absolute). as many have mentioned in this thread, there are many factors that go into sensing a flavor. number of taste buds on a given tongue is determined by genetics and changes over time (babies have taste buds on the sides and roof of their mouth, in addition to their tongue). the amount of the enzyme amylase produced in the mouth is genetic too, so different mouths break food down faster than others (in the case of amylase, it converts starches to simple sugars). sense of smell contributes highly to taste, and is also largely genetically determined.

the problem in standardizing taste is if people can't actually perceive the stimulus in question. they either don't realize it (as can be the case with color blindness) or have never experienced it (as can be the case with any single flavor), but either way it will be very hard to come to an agreement with someone that has/can. this is why, if everyone went to tasting school, there would still be differences in perception of flavor based on each person's ability to taste, as determined by their genes, and how much experience each person has had with the flavors in question. we might all agree that we're drinking espresso, but we might not all agree that we taste boysenberries in it, and to be honest, that doesn't bother me at all.

flavors can be defined in their pure forms (sugar tastes sweet, lemon juice tastes sour. etc.) to help guide us, however tasting nuances and subtleties in anything is based on both ability and experience. for example, if you've never heard a viola, then you'll be unlikely to pick it out of a string section. but, you can learn to hear it in the mix, just like you can use pure forms of flavor to help pick them out of the symphony of flavors in your cup.

I think it is wise to separate "taste" and "preference" here.

We're all seeing the same Rothko hung on the wall, some of us will like it and some of us will not. We can all discuss its form, nuance, textures and colours.

Taste is, as Jim said, an evolutionary mechanism. Yes, there are anosmias and other genetic quirks of smell but not to the extent that to one person two different aromatic compounds would smell like apples and cement, while to everyone else they smell like two similar sandalwoods.

Science, specifically food science, went to great lengths to understand the mechanisms so they could exploit them. I see Coca-Cola as one of their great achievements. I know I shouldn't like it, I understand why, but I do love the stuff. (The cane sugar one though, not the evil stuff in plastic bottles. Well, not as much!)

itsallaroundyou wrote:the fact that experienced tasting judges taste differently should be evidence enough that taste is not and cannot be absolute (close maybe, but not absolute). as many have mentioned in this thread, there are many factors that go into sensing a flavor. number of taste buds on a given tongue is determined by genetics and changes over time (babies have taste buds on the sides and roof of their mouth, in addition to their tongue). the amount of the enzyme amylase produced in the mouth is genetic too, so different mouths break food down faster than others (in the case of amylase, it converts starches to simple sugars). sense of smell contributes highly to taste, and is also largely genetically determined.

the problem in standardizing taste is if people can't actually perceive the stimulus in question. they either don't realize it (as can be the case with color blindness) or have never experienced it (as can be the case with any single flavor), but either way it will be very hard to come to an agreement with someone that has/can. this is why, if everyone went to tasting school, there would still be differences in perception of flavor based on each person's ability to taste, as determined by their genes, and how much experience each person has had with the flavors in question. we might all agree that we're drinking espresso, but we might not all agree that we taste boysenberries in it, and to be honest, that doesn't bother me at all.

flavors can be defined in their pure forms (sugar tastes sweet, lemon juice tastes sour. etc.) to help guide us, however tasting nuances and subtleties in anything is based on both ability and experience. for example, if you've never heard a viola, then you'll be unlikely to pick it out of a string section. but, you can learn to hear it in the mix, just like you can use pure forms of flavor to help pick them out of the symphony of flavors in your cup.

Nice argument there. I agree.

By the way, for an interesting perspective on individual smell reactions to the exact same compounds, check out the latest post on http://www.coronene.com/blog/. There is pretty good (if not exact) agreement on what is stinky, but the descriptions vary widely!

another_jim wrote:I believe this is nonsense.

People have a right to "see" a green light and an empty intersection when the light is red and there's traffic, but they shouldn't drive, and they should go to an eye doctor.

Why should "tasting" something wonderful when they put crap in their mouths be any different? Granted, they aren't a public menace, but they do need help.

Why should taste be subjective when sight isn't?

"Taste" is the result of a number of things - all of which are different from person to person. These range from the cultural (do you like Durian? Blue Cheese?) to the emotional (the smell of cheap sherry reminds me of my grandmother therefor I like it) to the physical (density and distribution of taste buds, physical damage through smoking) to the genetic (PTC).

So... something you think is crap (for perfectly good reasons to you) might taste great to someone else.
Which one of you is right?
Who makes the rules?

another_jim wrote:What I'm arping about is relatively simple -- the acquisition of correct taste.

"Correct"?!?!?!

As defined by WHOM?

another_jim wrote:It's obvious that taste is a perfectly objective sense, like all the others, albeit out of a job in the modern affluent part of the world. So why are people so misinformed? That's easy to understand too. It's the only way advertisers can persuade people that the crap which merely increases shareholder equity actually tastes good.

bull.
It's not obvious - it's wrong.
Sorry. But it's wrong. And, to be honest, it smacks of the sort of self-centered elitism that has permeated speciality coffee for WAY too long.

Bluecold wrote:The only thing "umami" is good for is that it's a telltale to spot impressionable idiots.

You have to be kidding.
And what do you base this pearl of wisdom on?