Coffee Quality Control

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CQC 3.02 How we Taste — The Labelled Lines Model

1: taste buds, 2: fungiform papillae.

The ridges on our tongues are not taste buds, but papillae. There are three types of papillae: fungiform, mainly positioned at the front of the tongue; foliate, found around the sides; and circumvallate, which are larger and mainly located at the back of the tongue. 

Taste buds are protected in tissue surrounding the sides of the papillae and open up to the mouth through a small pore. Each bud is made up of 50–150 taste receptor cells, and each of these extends into the pore with a small hair attached to each cell. This is similar to the way in which the the cilia extend from the olfactory sensory neurons in the olfactory epithelium in our noses.