Hone Your Tasting Skills with Apples [Tasting]

Have you come to the realization that, despite your best efforts, you're not that great of a taster? That you really have no clue how to distinguish coffees, wines, or even, sometimes, pork from chicken? You can use this season's apple harvest to help train yourself, on the cheap.

Erin Meister, barista trainer at Counter Culture Coffee, offers tips at Serious Eats on how to improve your tasting techniques for coffee "cupping," or deep sampling and comparison. But whatever it is you want to get better at tasting, Meister suggests using the bounty of fall apples, and some note-taking, to hone your mouth (and nose).

Buy a bushel of different varieties of apples and taste slices from each in succession, making sure to note which is which, and maybe jotting down some thoughts about the flavors that strike you as you go. Think about how the texture of each feels in your mouth, think about how sweet one type of the fruit is in relation with another. If you can start to recognize these types of elements in other things you taste regularly, it will be more of a cinch the next time you face down a flight of different coffees.

It's much harder to dent your budget on apple slices, as compared to finer wines and coffee varieties, and the selection in most parts of the U.S. right now is quite rich.

What have you become better at sampling, tasting, and judging, and how did you get there? Photo by incase..

Tastebud Training: How To Become A Better Coffee Taster | Serious Eats

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You can reach Kevin Purdy, the author of this post, on Twitter at @kevinpurdy or Google+.

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/ROwgD4G6rUE/hone-your-tasting-skills-with-apples

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