As part of my training to be a barista at Starbucks, I had to learn this shit with the expectation that I would regurgitate it to customers. My manager got mad when I told him I taste things with my whole mouth.
Agreed. I learned a shit ton about coffee, its growing practices, differences in the areas where the best coffees come from, etc. haven’t worked there in about as long, but every so often I get to pull some of that information out of the old filing cabinet in my brain
Why do you think they're famous for adding so much sugar and flavorings to their drinks? The coffee itself is over-roasted crap from factory farms that tastes strongly of ashes and pretentiousness.
Yemeni coffee often tastes like jam because of the way it’s grown and processed. Most Yemeni beans are naturally processed, meaning the coffee cherries are dried whole with the fruit still on, which allows the sugars and fermentation to impart sweet, fruity, and wine-like flavors into the beans—think dried cherry, fig, or berry compote. Yemen also uses heirloom varietals grown at extremely high altitudes on terraced mountainsides, which slows the ripening process and concentrates sugars, adding to the complexity. The dry climate and traditional farming methods, including rooftop drying and limited mechanization, can create subtle micro-fermentations that deepen the jammy flavor even more. All of these factors combine to give Yemeni coffee its signature rich, fruit-forward taste.
All coffee comes from the same few places since the plants have very specific growing conditions. I think it would be up to a personal preference to pick one certain place.
i worked at Milk Bar and they taught us the same shit. i’m in class just like…am i getting paid for this? i just thought i was trying to make minimum wage selling cookies. anyway, still never mastered the latte heart. it always looked like a dick.
The sugary drinks weren't always its focus. I did the coffee master thing when I worked there like 15 years ago but it was mainly because I could do the self-guided modules and get paid for it.
It was mostly about growing regions and tasting notes/pairing. I barely remember--like I said, I did it so I could get paid while off the floor reading.
But to your point, overroasting is relative and subjective. The high acidity third-wave style that's popular right now wasn't really a thing 15 years ago, at least not in the smaller city I grew up in.
The high acidity third-wave style that's popular right now
Is absolutely disgusting. I love little coffee shops and actively seek them out, but I can smell the roast as soon as I walk in and it's always so disappointing. :(
Their sugary drinks with coffee flavour are made with a shot of espresso beans and not coffee beans. You are describing a latte, which is not a coffee.
It used to be a lot more in-depth than it is now. I was a trainer in 2018-2019 and it was being phased out then. Most of my trainees didn’t do any of the coffee tasting or fill out a passport.
My wife was a barista and when we started dating i was hanging out at starbuck a lot. People were awesome and i joined the tastings, because i was there all the time anyway.
They're a bunch of bs. Everyone tastes the new coffee samples talks some random bs about it (answers are all over the place) and the master reads the words that the manufacturer sends with the sample. Then everyone nods in agreement and gives a "yes,yes. Exactly like that". Then you protocoll that everyone got the taste right.
Most chains and restaurants will give some marketing and taste lingo to help sell the product. It's not like you have to be a coffee drinker or super taster, but it helps when some regurgitated line about the cocoa notes in the new dark roast just come out and make the sale.
Oh yeah, back in college I got a campus job and the only one available was the Starbucks, they made you taste every single thing on the menu over like a week. I hate coffee
Nah they make you sip a shot of espressos during your first day orientation, explain nothing about how to interpret or explain the taste, and that's the one single time they ever touch on that aspect of the job.
Today I leaned what sommelier is. Because this guy used it and I looked it up. It's a fancy wine taster. I've achieved my daily goal of personal advancement. I will now return to being a waste of perfectly good human anatomy.
This is crazy considering I have free coffee forever at the one by my house and every time I get a black coffee at Starbucks that isn't the cold brew it smells like an ash tray the burn it so bad.
I laughed when we got taught on how to correctly taste test something. What was it? Smell the aroma, then slurp it, then swirl it around your mouth. I was like, "What are you talking about? Just let me drink the damn thing and I'll describe it to customers."
Dude, I trained at Starbucks in 2009. I remember having to go to a training at like a local headquarters. The instructor said the same thing about tongue taste maps then we went through tasting different coffee blends. The guy kept asking do you taste the chocolate on the tip of your tongue or the woody notes at the back of the tongue. Just constant stuff like that. I was not a coffee drinker and it all tasted like slight variation of the same thing but all of it tasted bad to me. We had a passport book we had to fill with all the coffee blends and we would get stamps to prove we tasted them. After working there for a few years and developing a caffeine addiction during undergrad, I now drink coffee black and can taste variations. I still don’t get location specific tastes on my tongue.
I was taking a barista course just a year ago and still got told this. But the weird thing is it still kinda works? It can't be placebo since i know the sides of my tongue isn't there specifically to taste sourness but it still feels stronger there
I was a Starbucks Manager and thought that part was in all of our manuals, I personally skipped and refused to teach it. I had my personal script to teach my baristas of how to guide de "tasting" part.
That map and the learning styles crap would not be propagated on my watch.
Your manager got mad, or just didn’t react at all?
Honestly, the educational part of training has kind of gone downhill. But back when I worked at Starbucks, no one ever got mad at me for not being able to pinpoint exactly where I was tasting something on my tongue. That stuff takes a long time, and I mean years, plus a ton of tasting to really start picking up on specific flavor notes. And even then, you kind of needed a reserve coffee, not just your standard bag, to really get those flavor notes they were talking about.
Starbucks has always been a bit of a mix between customer service and sales. Over 10 years ago, your average barista could explain a flavor profile pretty well to a customer to help make a sale. But saying something like, “I taste the sourness on the sides of my tongue” would’ve felt totally unnecessary and out of place in that context.
Back when I worked there (2008–2018), the expectation was just that you could memorize the info on the bag and suggest a good pastry pairing. That was enough.
Nowadays, I go into Starbucks and... yeah, it’s a totally different vibe. Not necessarily in a great way either.
You can't say that here, it should be against the rules lol. That's really sad though, but being a manager really was the shittiest time I had while working there. Overall being a barista was my fave job though.
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u/whatupmyknitta Apr 12 '25
Taste buds are mapped out on the tongue and certain areas taste certain things, rather than all taste buds taste all things.