I love how coffee tricks me into thinking I had enough sleep the prior night, waking me up first through my sense of smell, then through taste as the stimulating brown fluid rushes through my body and sends me on a high alert status! Anyone else???
"See Me. Feel Me. Touch Me. Hear Me. Drink Me."🍵☕
Although our sense of smell is not lightning speed (working at 70 bits of information per second) it is of utmost importance in how we experience coffee as it needs to be sipped to give our sense of smell sufficient time to do its work. And I for one don't want to burn my tongue!
The olfactory sense has two distinct categories: aroma and flavor. Aroma, or odor, is the olfactory sensation created by breathing.
Strong aromas are present in roasted whole beans or freshly ground coffee, but a prepared beverage by itself doesn't release much. Howver, when we drink coffee its compounds rapidly evolve in our mouth and travel quickly to our nasal cavity. Mmm!
One's ability to smell comes from olfactory sensory neurons, which are specialized sensory cells that are located in a small area of nasal tissue. These cells connect directly to the brain. Tiny little molecules released by coffee brewing stimulate these receptors and once these neurons detect the molecules, it triggers messages to your brain to identify the smell. Some of the more delightful flavors you smell in good coffee are vanilla, spices, flowers, jasmine, fruit, berries, caramel, chocolate, and nuts.
Contradictory as it may seem, the sensation of smell is stronger while exhaling.🍵💨☕
Taste, or gustation, works together with the sense of smell. If your sense of smell is not functional, then the sense of taste will also not function because of the relationship of the receptors. This is why you often are not hungry when you are sick.
Remember "smell" is not just aroma; it also is about how we experience complex flavors. Your nose is a gateway to myriads of distinct, natural flavors in coffee. How we experience flavor though smell is little understood; however, we do know that it involves our brain's attempts to compare the signals in an particular odor to ones it has recorded previously. The jasmine you fondly smelled in your grandmother's garden when you were eight? It created a memory your brain can access today to recognize the traces of jasmine in your coffee.
Reminder, never guzzle coffee or any other fine beverage! Allow your senses sufficient time to interact and harmonize!
This is my entry to BeautifulSunday hosted weekly by @ace108 as well as to SundayScentExperience by the lovely @dutchess.
Have a great day, Steemians!
Thanks for stopping by!
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Images taken with Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge in
© 2017 Nina Haskin. All rights reserved
