Using Coffee Beans to Reset Your Sense of Smell?
Stop in any perfume shop, and you’re bound to find small bowls of coffee beans set between the fragrances on display. A salesperson may advise you to sniff the beans in between smelling multiple scents. It’s a tradition so old and so widespread that it’s nearly impossible to find a fragrance counter without one…but does it actually work? It is commonly believed that the smell of coffee beans act as a palate cleanser for your nose, allowing you to continue to smell fragrance after fragrance. It’s a comforting idea, but it’s also not true.
Why our sense of smell “gives up” on us
Before addressing the coffee bean myth, it helps to understand the phenomenon it claims to solve: olfactory fatigue, sometimes called olfactory habituation. After a period of continuous exposure to a scent, the olfactory receptors in the nose stop signaling its presence to the brain. It’s the body’s way of filtering out the familiar so it stays alert to what’s new. It’s the same reason you stop noticing your own perfume by midday, or why a scent that struck a visitor to your home is invisible to you. It’s an example of sensory adaption; the body becomes desensitized to stimuli to prevent the overloading of the nervous system, thus allowing it to respond to new stimuli that are ‘out of the ordinary’.
What the research actually shows
Do coffee beans have some magical little molecular component that resets our palate, allowing us to continue to smell things? Turns out, the answer is no! Dr. Alexis Grosofsky of Beloit College’s Department of Psychology has scientifically proven that coffee beans do nothing to cleanse or reset your olfactory palate. He tested the coffee bean theory directly, having participants sample fragrances repeatedly, then attempt to reset their palate with coffee beans, with a neutral option, and with plain air in between. Coffee beans performed no better than the alternatives. Biologically, the nose is capable of continuing to process new scents for hours; what fatigues is our attention to a specific, repeated one, not our overall capacity to smell.
So why does the coffee bean ritual persist? Largely as a psychological distraction. Introducing a strong, unrelated scent gives the impression of a reset, even though it’s simply adding another aroma to the mix rather than clearing the previous one away.
The alternative perfumers actually use
So, what can we use to reset our palates when we’re feeling a bit of olfactory fatigue? The answer may surprise you. The most effective way to manage olfactory fatigue is one that costs nothing and travels with you everywhere: your own skin. Perfumers routinely sniff the crook of their elbow between fragrances. Because you’re in a constant state of habituation to your own scent, it functions as a stable, neutral baseline your nose can return to before assessing the next fragrance.
Leave the coffee beans in the bowl. Trust your own skin instead.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do perfume stores keep bowls of coffee beans on the counter? It’s a long-standing retail tradition built on the belief that coffee’s strong scent clears the nose between fragrances. In practice, coffee beans don’t reset the olfactory receptors; they simply introduce a new, distracting scent. The habit has persisted for so long, and across so many fragrance retailers, that it’s become an expected part of the shopping experience even though it has no measurable effect on smell perception.
Does smelling your own skin actually reset your sense of smell? Yes, more effectively than coffee beans. Because your nose is continuously habituated to your own scent, smelling the crook of your elbow gives it a stable, neutral reference point. Perfumers use this technique for exactly this reason: it allows the nose to recalibrate before evaluating the next fragrance, rather than adding another competing scent into the mix.
What is olfactory fatigue, and is it permanent? Olfactory fatigue, or olfactory habituation, is a temporary and entirely normal sensory adaptation. When the nose is exposed to a scent continuously, the receptors stop signaling its presence to the brain so the body can stay alert to new stimuli. It isn’t a loss of smelling ability; it resolves naturally once exposure to that particular scent stops, and the nose remains fully capable of detecting other fragrances in the meantime.
Is there any scientific backing to the coffee bean myth? No. Research from Beloit College’s Department of Psychology, led by Dr. Alexis Grosofsky, directly tested whether coffee beans outperform other options (including plain air) in resetting the sense of smell after fragrance exposure. Coffee beans showed no measurable advantage. The effect people attribute to coffee beans is understood to be psychological rather than biological.
If not coffee, what’s the best way to cleanse your palate while fragrance shopping? Pausing and smelling your own skin, particularly the inside of your elbow, is the method most commonly used by professional perfumers. Taking a short break between scents and limiting yourself to a small number of fragrances per session also helps prevent olfactory fatigue from setting in to begin with.
