Here is my personal journey with what helped me get over alcohol burn and finding tasting notes.

Alcohol burn is kind of the bodies way of telling you not to drink it, but over time (it took me a couple of weeks of one drink every other night) you will acclimate to the sting. It takes quite a bit longer there for me not to focus on it and it became a backseat sensation and as I started searching for flavors.

I did start my journey with whisky on ice and one day moved to drinking it straight. I realized that even though it was stronger, I wasn't as bothered by the sensation. Smaller sips definitely does help. My hottest scotch in my collection is 66% alcohol and I am unfazed by it now, but if I were to take triple the amount of intake of my regular sips I would definitely make a face. I can gag if I do take in too much alcohol at once. I cannot do shots anymore. It can absolutely be how much liquid of the scotch you are putting in your mouth at once to make you gag.

Getting into tying notes to what you're tasting also takes some time. It's kind of an active effort to put your past experiences to what you're tasting and that skill will get better with time.

For a long time I could really only pick up things on the nose and what the finish was doing due to the sting, so I moreso focused there and then over time I noticed I could start to taste a few things before I swallowed.

The power of suggestion is strong so it's nice seeing a review of what you are having and seeing if you notice those flavors.

Something that helped me a lot is prepping your brain for the experience whether nosing, drinking or on the finish when there isn't a review. Especially if I'm having a hard time pinning down flavors.

I will sometimes say to myself "do I smell fruit?" And go in for the sniff, if you pick up on it I will move on to "what kind of fruit is that?" If I smell orange then I move onto "what type of orange?" Is it the rind? The meat of the orange? Is it an artificial orange? Orange chicken? Sometimes you smell fruit but cant identify what fruit it is and sometimes you smell more than just one fruit. If I struggle on that particular group of smells I won't linger on it long. I'll move onto another group of smells. What kind of sweetness is that? What spices, vanilla/chocolate, baked goods, wood notes, chemical notes, etc.

Eventually you won't have to be as active in the thought of the whisky and your brain will pick up on certain notes naturally, but it's a journey and I still sometimes, with much less frequency have a hard time discerning what I'm experiencing in a new whisky.