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Do Coffee Beans Reset Your Sense of Smell? What the Evidence Shows
Do coffee beans clear your nose between perfumes? See what the coffee-versus-lemon experiment tested and how to make clearer scent comparisons.
Quick Answer
Coffee beans have not been shown to reset your sense of smell between fragrances. For a useful comparison, keep a small set of clearly identified samples, make short notes and pause when the impressions start to blur.
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A More Useful Approach at the Fragrance Counter
If you are choosing between two fragrances, keep track of which sample is which and give each a short description before adding more. When the impressions begin to blur, stop adding samples and come back to the decision later if needed.
For example, a note might read, "A feels drier; B feels sweeter; I prefer A." If the next comparison becomes "I cannot confidently tell B from C," keep that uncertainty in the record. A clearly identified pair and a preference you can explain give you something useful to return to.
A personal note: At a fragrance counter, I would be happy to enjoy the smell of the beans as a pause. What I would not want is to feel obliged to trust my next impression more because I had followed the ritual. Two clearly labeled samples and a short note would help me make the choice I actually came for. I like leaving room to say that a difference is uncertain, while still enjoying the coffee aroma for its own sake.
What the Coffee-Versus-Lemon Experiment Tested
In Grosofsky, Haupert and Versteeg's 2011 experiment, 63 college students repeatedly smelled three fragrances. They then had a 10-second interval with coffee beans, lemon slices or air before choosing the unfamiliar scent from four fragrances.
Coffee showed no statistically significant identification advantage. The researchers also questioned whether the procedure had induced fatigue, because exposure amounts and sniffing duration were not tightly controlled. The results did not demonstrate a reset or establish exact equivalence among the three conditions.
Why Repeated Smells Can Feel Less Distinct
Repeated exposure can change how strongly you perceive a smell. In Dalton and Wysocki's 1996 study, people were exposed to one of two odors at home for two weeks. They became less sensitive to the odor they had encountered, and some effects persisted after exposure ended. That long exposure is distinct from the brief fragrance-counter comparison; its duration is not a recovery time for a shopping break.
The US National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders explains that airborne odor molecules stimulate sensory cells connected to the brain. Smelling beans adds coffee's own odor molecules to the experience.
Stronger, Clearer and Nicer Are Different Judgments
Before deciding that a comparison has improved, ask which judgment has changed. The 2011 experiment tested identification, one of several possible tasks:
| Question | Judgment |
|---|---|
| Can I notice an odor? | Detection |
| Can I identify it? | Identification |
| Can I tell these samples apart? | Discrimination |
| How strong does it seem? | Perceived intensity |
| Do I enjoy it? | Preference |
Drinking Coffee Changes the Comparison
A sip adds taste, temperature, texture and aroma from the mouth. A 2020 coffee-consumption study found changes in some basic-taste thresholds without a corresponding improvement in the measured olfactory threshold. Drinking coffee and sniffing beans between perfumes are different questions.
The sniff-and-sip article explains the two aroma routes and a simple one-cup observation.
For a practical comparison of several coffees, use our at-home coffee tasting guide. Clearly identified samples and your own notes give that tasting its useful structure.
Sources
- Grosofsky, Haupert and Versteeg (2011), An Exploratory Investigation of Coffee and Lemon Scents and Odor Identification
- Dalton and Wysocki (1996), The nature and duration of adaptation following long-term odor exposure
- NIDCD, Smell Disorders: how smell works
- Fjaeldstad and Fernandes (2020), Chemosensory Sensitivity after Coffee Consumption Is Not Static