I just returned from the Roasters Guild Origin Trip to Brazil and there were a number of things that we saw that surprised me in both good and bad ways. We visited 9 different producers or producing groups where the main good surprises were the diversity of cup characteristics that we saw in the many cuppings in the many different growing areas. There was a clarity to many of the coffees that one doesn't traditionally associate with coffee from Brazil.
I recently had a discussion with a roaster who was having difficulty with a natural dry processed coffee from Ethiopia. He did not have much experience roasting DP coffees and had not really even considered how coffees processed in that style were different. He believed that the problems that he was finding in the cup were the result of the beans not all being of a uniform size since he was not having similar problems with other coffees that he was roasting (which happened to all be washed coffees and thus of a more uniform bean size).
