Training your palate?

There has been a lot of great advice here so far. Let me add that most of what we call taste is really smell. Flavor is the combination of smell and taste. Let the nose do more of your tasting. Also involve the sense of touch. How does the tea feel as you sip. Do your tasting in as quiet a place as possible. Sip slowly and experience each sip. As others mentioned keep notes on each sip and at each temperature change in the cup.

One of the first revelations to come to me was malt. Everyone keep talking about it and I couldn’t detect it. Then I hit upon an especially malty tea. It was so obvious even I couldn’t miss it. Once I made the connection I knew I detected it before without realizing it. I also started picking it up easily in new teas.

Same with many of the other flavors like cocoa, chocolate, and honey. Peppery I am only beginning to grasp. Nutty is very hit or miss for me. That may be because I don’t eat a lot of nuts. Nuts to me means peanuts and cashews.

Do your tasting without reading the company description or Steepster reviews. Write down your notes and then compare. Sometimes your notes will agree, sometimes they are way different. Its all good. Sometmes reading the notes afterwards brings to mind things you did taste without noting.

If you still think all you are tasting is fairly standard tea, then get a truly standard tea and do a side by side. You will be amazed at the difference.

This is a great topic and the responses so far have been really informative.

I struggle with the same thing, it’s frustrating to me not to be able to taste all the varying subtle nuances of tea. Particularly straight up unflavored teas.

Sometimes I feel like the whole world and everyone on Steepster got together to play a joke on me. Like, “CHOCOLATE? In this plain regular tea? What kind of chocolate do you eat because my chocolate does not taste like this!!”

I think the problem is my expectation of how something should taste, and that i don’t pick up on anything subtle. I love chocolate (will stick with this example), so therefore I feel like I will never get the creamy, rich, mouth filling delicious sensation of eating chocolate from drinking hot flavored water.

It sucks. I want to experience what everyone else is, but I’m not getting very far with that.

Perfect example of not tasting chocolate or baked goods in a tea that everyone raves about – Laoshan Black.

I thought it was pretty good, definitely amazing that a regular plain black tea can have so many interesting flavors within it. I can tell it is a quality tea and that it is special, but no way in hell was I getting any baked goods or chocolatey tastes out of it. I did order the sampler pack so I’m looking forward to round 2!

Therefore I still prefer flavored teas over non, but my tastes are adapting as the sickingly sweet ones I used to love are starting to scream “CHEMICALS!” to me and I am beginning to prefer subtler, more delicate flavors that don’t punch me in the face. Also I have been swayed by some of Butiki’s straight teas, and I enjoy a creamy oolong for sure.

Again, great topic and I will try some of these tips. Unfortunately I fear I just might not be refined enough to catch the subtleties. Subtle-teas.

What do you eat? Try upgrading the quality and freshness of the food you consume for a week — and try going for more subtle, natural flavors, i.e. put down those “real fruit-flavored” jelly beans and have an actual piece of fruit in season — and then go back to tasting tea. I bet you’ll appreciate the subtle flavors of tea better!

I was just lamenting to myself about not having a sophisticated taste for tea (I attempted to describe Twinings Lady Grey Decaf in a review and just got completely derailed). I couldn’t tell you the difference between black teas, so I decided to sample a handful of standard grocery-store black teas all at once. I picked up Lipton, Tetley, Builder’s, Ty-Phoo and PG Tips, plus a couple other odd brands, and tasted them all at the same time. It definitely became clear that each of them had a completely different character. Although my tea understanding is still murky, I did come away from that experiment with a favorite go-to black tea that never disappoints. (It’s Make Mine a Builder’s, in case you were wondering.)

There are so many good ideas here—and, unfortunately, more tea companies I need to check out! It makes me think that I should refrain from posting reviews until I’ve developed a more sensitive palate, and vocabulary, for tea. Thanks everyone!

I’d say just enjoy the tea and taste what you taste!

As you try more straight teas you’ll probably begin to notice more of the subtle differences. I think a large part of it is comparing the taste of the tea to other teas you’ve tried, and the more you’ve tried the more differences you can find

I think it’s sort of about the thought process as well. For me its sort of analytical thing. I like trying to break down the flavor to it’s smallest/basic parts, which I guess is something that I tend to do (for better or for worse) with everything in life.

I don’t really think that you can intentionally train your pallet, you more just let it train itself. Also, you don’t want to force yourself to taste flavors. If you don’t notice a taste naturally, you may not actually be tasting it. :)

(Sorry for all the “I think”s and rambling sentences) haha

If you want to refine your palate, I recommend drinking mostly — if not only — unflavored teas for a little while. Let the sip sit on your tongue for a moment before swallowing.

It also takes some time. I remember I tried a certain tea several months ago and was disappointed — thinking it tasted rather standard — a few months later I tried it again and it was like a whole new tea! I suddenly tasted more than ever.

If you have flavored too often, you grow accustomed to having tastes shoved at you, so tone them down — or cut them out entirely — for a little while and then start introducing them again. You’ll start picking out more things from the base tea than you do now.

Another thing about the time, is I find you pick more flavor out of each time if you drink them a lot. You’ll taste more from cup 20 than you did from cup 1. (not suggesting drinking all 20 in one day though… heh)

Lots and lots of great comments already :) I’d say that one of the most important things is the mind set – you’ve got to be open and go in with as little in the way of expectations as you can. Knowing to look for caramel (say) can be helpful in finding it, but expecting it to taste Like caramel can just disappoint and lead to you missing other flavours. There aren’t rights and wrongs with flavour – if you get a flavour, it’s there, doesn’t matter whether other people get it or not. Describing flavours is also very tied in with memory, experience and so on – and the more you try to describe a flavour to yourself, the more you’ll explore whether a particular description works for you or not.

I’d also say that it can be helpful to have a tasting method for yourself. Break the flavour experience down into components – say sweetness, acidity/sourness, bitterness, saltiness, savoury/umami, astringency and texture/mouthfeel.Try and think about each of these in turn, decide if there is a lot or a little of each, and if you can find something it’s similar too in that respect.

Oh, and once you start focusing on tasting with tea, chances are you’ll start doing the same with everything else ;) I got into tasting (rather than just consuming) with coffee, which I now do for a job. But that’s lead me to start tasting and appreciating the nuances in tea, in beer, etc.

A lot of great ideas on here. I would add though that you might try starting out with the very basics of flavor in tea. Taste the tea carfully, pay attention for: sweet, sour, and bitter. Consentrate on their amounts and the relation of one to the others. Then consider mouth-feel: how viscous does the tea seem compared to plain water? How astringent is the tea(the quality of tea, coffee, and some wines that makes your mouth feel dry)? Now, how does the mouth-feel of the tea relate to it’s sweetness, bitterness, and sourness? Finally keeping all that in mind, does it remind you of anything else you’ve eaten or drunk before? Doing this repeatedly can strengthen your palate over time.

I’m personally just staring out in tea(I developed my palate elsewhere), but one of the best places I’ve run across for Chinese teas is Imperial Tea Court in San Fransisco. Their descriptions have been some of the more strait forward and helpful I’ve come across and their blog(linked to from their site) has amazing insights into the Chinese tea industry if you read the backlog. They owner of the place Roy goes to China every year to source his teas; heck, he even owns a facility or two over there. Top-notch tea, though it can be a bit pricy at times. I’d look elsewhere for Indian or Japanese tea.(Though they do have what looks like one of the higher quality Hojicha’s I’ve been able to find; made from plants from Gyokuro production instead of regular Sencha.)

Wow, tons of great advice!

I would just agree that you need to keep drinking! I feel like my palate has changed A LOT in the years I’ve been drinking tea, but it has been slow…and I started from a “dead tongue” place of drinking virtually nothing but soda pop and anything else with comparable amounts of sugar. It took an exceedingly long time to be able to even stand to drink a tea clear, let alone enjoy it. I also had a lot of trouble picking out anything but the most obvious flavours, but that is developing, too.

It does take some effort and concentration though, it is less like a natural talent (although some people definitely do have extra talent for it!) and more like learning a skill.

Something that might help. With each tea you try, do this:

1) Breathe out.
2) Take a sip.
3) Hold it on your tongue.
4) Breathe in through your nose and aerate the sip.
5) Check out the difference in how flavourful the taste is!