How to Cleanse Your Palate to Better Enjoy Cigars

Sometimes when we smoke our favourite cigars the flavour tastes a little different to usual; perhaps a little muted, or masked by other flavours. Before smoking, it can be an idea to use a palate cleanser to ensure you are experiencing the full potential of your cigar. We show you why and how you need to start using palate cleansers before you pick up your next cigar.

Why do you need a palate cleanser?

As we all know, our taste buds are responsible for allowing us to perceive and differentiate between flavours. The taste buds on our tongues can only sense five flavours; salty, sweet, sour, bitter and savoury (or umami). Each of these flavours are all it takes to provide the cigars you smoke with their unique tastes! Like many things in life, our taste buds won’t reach their full functionality if they aren’t clean. Think of it this way; if your glasses are covered in grease smears from our fingers, we won’t be able to see clearly! Taste buds can only capture the full experience of a cigar’s flavour if they aren’t hidden behind the pie you had at lunch. This is where palate cleansing comes in.

The goal with cleansing your palate is to clean away the taste residue of the day, without leaving behind more flavours to mask your cigars true taste potential. This is why a swish of mouthwash or a stick of gum just won’t suffice, as that minty fresh feeling will just give off an overwhelming menthol tone to anything you try to smoke.

What should I use to cleanse my palate?

The majority of flavours in foods come from the fats that we eat. But being such a good carrier of flavour also makes them a little tricky to dissolve away from the tongue. The best way to remove leftover fats from your palate is through solvents; the kind you can drink. Good examples of this are water, alcoholic drinks and acids. Something like bitter lemon works well, as this incorporates both the water and acid aspects. You can also achieve this type of cleanser by adding a twist of lemon or lime to a weak alcoholic drink. The alcoholic drink should be weakened, as many alcohols can also add more flavours to the mix.

Foods to try:

If you are fancying a nibble rather than a drink to cleanse your palate, then there are a few tasty options to choose from. Dark chocolate is regularly mentioned by cigar aficionados as both a palate cleanser and a great accompaniment to a quality stogie. If you aim for as high a percentage of chocolate as possible, around the 80% mark, the taste shouldn’t linger in your mouth like milk chocolate does.

As a natural solvent, lemon-based products are one of the best options for cleansing your palate. Picking something cooling like lemon sorbet can also be refreshing between smokes, as the heat of the cigar makes frozen mouthfuls a welcome change on the tongue. Ginger is another way to cleanse the palate. Used frequently by the Japanese to make way for the delicate flavours in fish dishes, a slither of pickled ginger can quickly renew your taste buds.

For a new, fun spin on the more classic cleansers, some younger smokers have taken to balancing out alkaline flavours with acidic ones via the use of slightly sour sweets, such as Skittles.

Do you cleanse your palate before smoking cigars? Let us know your preferred methods in the comments or via our social media.